1. Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives

2. Initiatives should include:
Many strategies
Many efforts
Many parts of the community

3. Goals of evaluation: To understand what’s going on.
To empower communities to take care of their own problems.

4. Why evaluate? To understand how initiatives develop and succeed.
To improve programs.
To give community members a “voice”.
To hold groups accountable.

5. Community Evaluation System

6. Supporting Collaborative Planning:
Documenting community implementation, action, and change
Assessing community adaptation, institutionalization, capacity
Evaluating more distal outcomes
Promoting dissemination
Supporting Collaborative Planning
Involves diverse groups of people
Clarifies your visions, messages, and strategies
Identifies the changes your group seeks
Identifies local resources
Documenting implementation, action, and change

7. Documentation of: Local efforts/accomplishments
Changes related to mission

8. How things were achieved
Intermediate outcomes.
Assessing adaption, institutionalization, and capacity.
Look at how intervention has changed.
Determine if efforts to sustain initiative are effective.
Determine if measures to improve capacity are effective.

9. Evaluating More Distal Outcomes
Use quantitative as well as qualitative methods to understand efforts.
Document and recognize intermediate outcomes (i.e., community and systems changes).

10. Promoting Dissemination
Presentations
Professional articles
Workshops/training
Handbooks
Media reports
The Internet