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Session Title: Community as Context: Evaluation of Comprehensive Community Initiatives
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Panel Session 466 to be held in Sebastian Section K on Friday, Nov 13, 9:15 AM to 10:45 AM
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Sponsored by the Presidential Strand
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| Chair(s): |
| Teresa Behrens, The Foundation Review, behrenst@foundationreview.org
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| Discussant(s):
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| Teresa Behrens, The Foundation Review, behrenst@foundationreview.org
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| Abstract:
Recognizing the complexity of communities, many foundations have adopted a strategy of supporting broad or deep change in targeted geographical areas. Commonly called comprehensive community initiatives, or CCI's, these initiatives present unique evaluation challenges, including multiple interventions; often poorly defined or overly ambitious goals; and an evaluator who may become part of the change work. This panel, which includes authors represented in the first issue of The Foundation Review, this will explore the ways in which evaluators met these challenges and the ways in which the community perspective can be represented in the evaluation.
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Lessons From The Colorado Trust's Healthy Communities Initiative
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| Ross Conner, University of California Irvine, rfconner@uci.edu
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| Doug Easterling, Wake Forest University, dveaster@wfubmc.edu
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Ross Conner and Doug Easterling lead the evaluation team for this initiative to engage communities in developing locally relevant strategies to improve health. They will share lessons about how 29 different community contexts were considered in the initiative evaluation.
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Evaluating Scale, Scope and Sustainability
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| David Chavis, Community Science, dchavis@communityscience.com
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| Tina Trent, NeighborWorks, ttrent@nw.org
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Trent and Chavis reviewed 11 comprehensive community initiatives to identify factors related to scale, scope and sustainability. Chavis will discuss how these constructs were evaluated and what community characteristics influences both the evaluations and the results.
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Evaluation of Foundation Readiness for Community Change
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| Prudence Brown, Independent Consultant, pruebrown@aol.com
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| Marie Colombo, Skillman Foundation, mcolombo@skillman.org
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| Della M Hughes, Brandeis University, dhughes@brandeis.edu
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Brown, Colombo and Hughes describe how one foundation made significant changes to how it operates in order to work more effectively with the community. In this presentation they will discuss how they evaluated foundation readiness and the challenges of giving feedback to foundation staff.
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