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Cost and Effectiveness of Health Delivery in Underserved Communities: The Evaluation of Education, Community Health Outreach (ECHO-2) in North Carolina
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| Presenter(s):
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| Anne D'Agostino,
Compass Consulting Group,
anne-d@mindspring.com
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| Sarah Heinemeier,
Compass Consulting Group,
sarahhei@mindspring.com
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| Amy Germuth,
Compass Consulting Group,
agermuth@mindspring.com
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| Abstract:
The John Rex Endowment offers funding for activities, programs, and organizations with the goal of improving the health of underserved people in the triangle area of NC. One such program, ECHO-2 (Education, Community Health Outreach), is a 2-year extension of the ECHO program provided by County Human Services and is scheduled to end in June 2007. ECHO-2 is a comprehensive system designed to bridge gaps in the health delivery system in six underserved, primarily Latino neighborhoods in the county. In 2006, the Endowment requested an evaluation of ECHO-2 to assess its effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its goals. This evaluation first entailed conducting indepth interviews with program staff as well as members of the population served. Next,information gained through cost-effectiveness analyses were reconciled within the very complicated and complex cultural context of the ECHO-2 program recipients. In this presentation, Compass will discuss the value of combining these approaches to evaluation for maximizing learning about program costs and benefits; using evaluation results to facilitate discussions with the larger community around improving, enhancing, and/or changing “traditional” methods of providing health care services; and some of the ways in which the ECHO-2 evaluation has already changed some of the health delivery practices within the county's Human Services organization.
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Measuring Program Support Using the Quantification of Leveraged Resources
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| Presenter(s):
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| Antoinette Brown,
Independent Consultant,
antoinettebbrown@juno.com
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| Abstract:
In 2006 the North Carolina legislature created the Initiative to Eliminate Health Disparities. Twenty-three grantees were funded to implement a variety of activities intended to eliminate health disparities in the areas of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. An evaluation was designed to capture outcomes of the initiative. Among the outcomes were behavioral and clinical changes, policy changes and support for the initiative. The indicator selected to measure initiative support was the amount of resources that grantees were able to leverage. Resources leveraged included volunteer hours, in-kind contributions, and monetary resources. Grantees entered data about participant behaviors, clinical indicators, policy activities and resources monthly into a web-based database. Grantees exhibited a wide range of resource acquisition but were generally successful in securing volunteers from the community and in-kind corporate contributions.
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