Health in Organizational Policies: Philadelphia Ujima's Program Evaluation

Background and Purpose: Drexel University College of Medicine’s Philadelphia Ujima Health Collaborative represents a coalition of community, academic and faith organizations that have partnered to improve the health of their organizations and communities. The coalition addresses heart health, nutrition, fitness, sexual health and healthy relationships through a health promotion outreach and training program. The coalition was formed in 2007 and has recently completed its first site-wide program evaluation. The principal goal of the evaluation was to assess the impact of Ujima’s health promotion programming on the partner sites’ health behaviors and organizational policies.

Methods/Design: Key informant interviews were conducted with the adult community sites and focus groups were conducted with the high school partner as part of this evaluation. Key informants were recruited to participate by site liaisons who also served as key informants. Thirteen semi-structured interviews and three focus groups (with 6 participants each) were conducted with 6 partner sites. The interviews and focus groups assessed a) Level of knowledge retention from educational sessions b) Effects of programming on organization’s health culture and c) Changes in the organization’s formal and informal policies that occurred as a result of Ujima’s health promotion program.

Findings/Conclusion: All (100%) of the interviewed partner sites implemented at least one health policy change in their organization as a direct result of Ujima’s programming. The implication of these results is that Ujima’s health promotion activities imparted knowledge that was largely sustained and that mobilized partner community organizations to successfully change their health culture.