ES 9. Evaluate the Effectiveness, Accessibility, and Quality of Personal and Population-based Health Services

Core Function: Assurance

Ongoing evaluation of a health program’s effectiveness gives you a better understanding of the program’s impact and indicates where changes need to be made. While evaluation may be beyond the capacity of many local health departments, knowing which programs are effective, considered promising, and/or evidence-based can guide your program selection or replication.

Two common types of evaluation can help substance abuse prevention professionals develop and implement successful programming:

• Implementation/process evaluation helps determine if a program is being implemented as intended.
• Effectiveness/outcome evaluation assesses the program’s progress toward meeting short-term, intermediate, and long-term outcomes.

Resources on Conducting Evaluations

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health provides a step-by-step guide to program evaluation and planning, as well as templates, resources and tools. https://www.cdc.gov/eval/framework/index.htm 
• Introduction to Program Evaluation for Public Health Programs: A Self-Study Guide is a “how to” guide for planning and implementing evaluation activities. The manual, based on the CDC’s Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health, is intended to assist managers and staff of public, private, and community public health programs to plan, design, implement and use comprehensive evaluations in a practical way. https://www.cdc.gov/eval/guide/index.htm
• Practical Strategies for Culturally Competent Evaluation is a CDC resource guide for state partners to promote cultural competence in the evaluation of public health programs and initiatives. https://www.cdc.gov/dhdsp/docs/cultural_competence_guide.pdf 
• Community Tool Box, a service of the Center for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas, provides an overview of evaluation types and techniques, with tools for use in designing and conducting an evaluation. https://ctb.ku.edu/en/search/node/evaluation
• American Evaluation Association provides a directory of evaluators and online resources to help organizations plan and understand the evaluation process. http://www.eval.org/p/cm/ld/fid=53 
• Connecticut’s Local Evaluator Workgroup (LEW), staffed and convened by the Center for Prevention Evaluation and Statistics, is comprised of community-level evaluators from Connecticut’s substance abuse prevention initiatives, serves to increase Connecticut’s local evaluation capacity by developing and identifying best practices and standards for local evaluation; troubleshooting issues relevant to local evaluation; sharing resources; peer support; and bolstering evaluation workforce development in Connecticut. For more information, e-mail  sussman@uchc.edu