Hello all,
I am going to nudge the dialogue a bit on these important issues.
In Lise's excellent article, the issue that resonates for me is how to comprehensively evaluate how well we are doing in our system wide health promotion work, and in programs at an individual level. There is a tension between our vision to
reduce health inequities and improve population health, and our funded projects requirements to use indicators and measures of risk factor reduction.
We want our evaluation indicators and quality improvement plans to reflect our social determinants of health (SDOH) approach, and our vision and values. While we have long term goals, getting there from the short-term outcomes of products, education and skills-building sessions, and community supports, seems to be unreachable. We spend considerable energy and resources on the activities and measures of the short-term outcomes to show we are active and productive. But the intermediate and longer term objectives of improved policies, practices, capacities, community engagement, social inclusion; that could provide evidence of effectiveness, become more elusive.
Perhaps it is a matter of perspective. If we take our logic models and evaluation plans and map them forwards from activities to outcomes to see that there is a path that shapes values, builds support of actions, provides information and advocates for policies, then the goals can become clearer. Backward mapping from our goals to our activities can help us see the conditions that should be necessary to achieve our long-term vision. We need to see the work we do in context of our broad organization, our communities and partners. And we should share our stories of what we are doing, struggling with, and our strategies for change.
What are you struggling with in your match of values with practice? Let's keep the discussion going.
Alison Stirling,
Health Nexus / Nexus Santé
http://www.healthnexus.ca
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Below I've highlighted some of the points that Lise made in the article about evaluation.
-----Original Message-----
Check out this article in last Friday (28 August 2009) Ontario Health Promotion E-newsletter (OHPE) by Lise Labreque.
http://www.ohpe.ca/node/10748
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Maybe your agency's value of and work in community capacity building is "in tension" with your funders' request for data on individual interventions....
How to comprehensively evaluate our full spectrum of CDPM work? We are faced with two inter-related tensions. First, we see the trend for funders who want to track accountability of CDPM efforts through both indicators at the individual level... and through indicators for outcomes only. Such measures of effectiveness overlook the fact that in health promotion, the process of how and with whom we do our work, and the context in which individuals live are equally important indicators to track in order to fully interpret successful "outcomes."
Second, over-and-above individual indicators, we also want to look at indicators for community and system level change such as those for community capacity building, shifts in public policies, civic participation, partnerships and collaboration, and changes in social infrastructure.
Remember that measurement of health promotion is not just about outcomes, but also about process and context.
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Let's have more discussion here in CLICK4HP about the issues raised, and the approaches we are taking to mesh our values with our work.
Alison
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Alison Stirling,
Knowledge Management Developer,
Health Nexus Santé
180 Dundas Street W., Suite 1900
Toronto, ON M5G 1Z8
Direct: 416-408-6918 or 416-408-2249 x 2227
Toll-free (in Ontario) 1-800-397-9567 x2227
Email: [log in to unmask]
www.healthnexus.ca www.nexussante.ca
Formerly Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse/Anciennement Le Centre Ontarien d'information en prévention
To manage subscriptions/passwords, or view archives, go to http://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/click4hp.html . [log in to unmask] is run in collaboration with Health Nexus: http://www.healthnexus.ca/index_eng.php
To manage subscriptions/passwords, or view archives, go to http://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/click4hp.html . [log in to unmask] is run in collaboration with Health Nexus: http://www.healthnexus.ca/index_eng.php
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