Building local capacity to adapt, implement and evaluate evidence-based public health strategies: North Carolina's collaborative approach

The NC Division of Public Health mandates that local health departments (LHDs) conduct community health assessments at least every three years with action plans aligned to Healthy North Carolina 2020 objectives, which serve as the state’s health improvement plan. Starting in 2015, action plans must include evidence-based strategies (EBS) with detailed plans for staffing, training, implementing, monitoring and evaluating these strategies. Many practitioners face significant challenges in identifying appropriate EBS and successfully tailoring and implementing strategies in local settings. In 2012, a partnership of academic, non-profit, and practice agencies received grant funds to test the effectiveness of a national model to build EBS capacity for LHDs in NC. The training was tailored and delivered to over 125 public health practitioners statewide.  Evaluations of those trainings indicated a need for more advanced skill-building that provides in-depth and ongoing guidance on how to adapt, implement, and evaluate specific EBS. In response to this need, the partnership developed EBS 2.0, a training that focuses on a specific EBS and provides participant teams with ongoing coaching to assist with each step in the process of implementing an EBS. We will apply a competency-based, pre/post-test approach to evaluate training impact on practitioners’ perceptions of competency to plan and implement EBS, and use a six-month post-training evaluation to assess changes in practice and application of skills.

This session will detail the collaborative process used to tailor and launch EBS 2.0, describe the training and coaching delivered, present data on training impact, and review lessons learned.