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Session Title: Identifying Best Practices in Program Implementation and Evaluation: Innovative Examples From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
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Panel Session 851 to be held in Centennial Section D on Saturday, Nov 8, 10:45 AM to 12:15 PM
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Sponsored by the Government Evaluation TIG
and the Health Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Thomas Chapel,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
tchapel@cdc.gov
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| Abstract:
To achieve the distal outcomes with which public health agencies have been charged will require coordinated efforts of many sectors and players. The implications for evaluation are that interventions and their evaluation are complex, multi-layered, and difficult to achieve. Evaluation and implementation challenges may exceed skills of our partners, who, fortunately, yearn for technical assistance and tools to aid at any or all stages of evaluation. This presentation discusses strategies of large CDC programs to identify best approaches for their partners and grantees. Each program will describe its situation briefly and how it landed on the specific tools or approaches it chose for providing guidance. The development and implementation of the tool/approach will be discussed, as will any information on how the guidance is perceived by the target audience of grantees and how it has changed evaluation practice at the partner/grantee level. Lessons from the CDC experience will also be drawn.
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Perspectives on a Promising Practices Evaluation
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| Susan Ladd,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
sladd@cdc.gov
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| Rosanne Farris,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
rfarris@cdc.gov
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| Jan Jernigan,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
jjernigan1@cdc.gov
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| Pam Williams-Piehota,
RTI International,
ppiehota@rti.org
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| Belinda Minta,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
bminta@cdc.gov
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention (DHDSP) identified a need to build practice-based evidence for policy and system-level interventions that could be replicated by state health departments to achieve public health goals. To meet this need, DHDSP launched an initiative to evaluate seven programs to identify effective interventions as well as promising practices. We briefly describe the evaluation design, the process used to evaluate the state programs, and the theoretical framework used to guide the evaluation. We discuss how challenges such as implementation and data collection delays were used to inform internal policy for future applications. We highlight benefits that sites attributed to their participation in the evaluation process including changes in their perceptions of evaluation and evaluative thinking, and increases in their internal capacity for conducting evaluation.
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Rapid Evaluation of Promising Asthma Programs in Schools
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| Marian Huhman,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
mhuhman@cdc.gov
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| Dana Keener,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
dkeener@cdc.gov
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As part of its mission to prevent the most serious health risk behaviors among children and adolescents, the Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funds school-based programs for asthma management. To help schools assess the impact of their program, DASH provides evaluation technical assistance using a rapid evaluation model. Rapid evaluations are designed to be completed within one year from initiation. Their purpose is to describe short-term impacts and outcomes, enhance the understanding of program activities, and provide recommendations for program improvement. This presentation will explain the components of the rapid evaluation model and describe its application for two school-based asthma management programs. How the programs used the information as well as strengths and weaknesses of the model will also be presented.
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Using National Standards to Evaluate Cultural Competence in the African American Tuberculosis Intensification Project
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| Linda Leary,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
lsl1@cdc.gov
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In 2005, CDC, Division of Tuberculosis Elimination funded three sites to participate in the African American Intensification Project. The purpose of this project was to intensify tuberculosis (TB) prevention and control efforts in the African American communities and to increase cultural competence among care providers. To measure progress toward this effort, the National Standards on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health Care (CLAS Standards) were used to assess progress towards increasing cultural competence of TB program staff. Program self-evaluation data were examined and interviews were conducted with the program staff at all three sites regarding activities instituted to address cultural competence. Qualitative data were summarized and categorized in a matrix format stratified by the 14 CLAS standards. This cross-examination provided valuable information on the effectiveness of the services initiated and the matrix displayed how the project activities contributed to the elimination of health disparities.
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