Tuesday, August 12, 2008

More about the week 4 workshop

The first few weeks of this 4-week workshop provided an overview to the EBPH 6-step process (O'Neall, M. A., & Brownson, R. C. (2005). Teaching evidence-based public health to public health practitioners. Annals of Epidemiology, 15(7), 540-544. ).

We spent one week on data gathering and one week exploring literature databases. During the last session, I covered resources with a consumer-health bent. I did that because so many PH workers are in clinics, work with clinic staff, put on health fairs, or need to design programs for the public.

However, now that the data is gathered and the literature has been researched, it's time to review the last 3 steps of the EBPH process:

4.Develop program or policy options
5.Create an implementation plan
6.Evaluate the program or policy

I don't have anything new for steps 4 or 5-- put those health theories to work and revise your logic models. But, the evaluation part has been in the back of my mind. I see this as something that can really make or break a program. After all, you can put together the best intervention ever seen but if you don't have the data to support it you won't get refunded!

So here are a few links to evaluating your programs.

CDC Evaluation Working Group: Framework for Program Evaluation

WK Kellogg Foundation Evaluation Handbook

Association for Community Health Improvement: Outcomes Measurements

The latter item is a meta-site-- it points to bunches of other resources. I don't normally like to do that, but they've pulled together a great list of outcomes measurements.

I want to give a big THANK YOU to my Tuesday group. They were great-- stuck with me through these 4 weeks. We had a hurricane last week (well, sort of-- we thought we were going to have a hurricane!) but other than that they were here for each class, asked questions, made comments-- I really had a good time. I hope they did as well.

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