Program Evaluation for Identifying Promising Public Health Practices
- Rosanne Farris, PhD., RD, Applied Research and Transition Team Leader, Division of Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, CDC
Objective/Supporting Skills and Knowledge
Upon completion of this session, participants will be able to:
- Understand the difference between best and promising practices
- Understand the uses of identifying promising program practices
- Gain skills in describing promising practices through the use of success stories methods
- Learn skills necessary in planning for dissemination of program information for various audiences
Summary
Documenting promising program practices through the use of success stories can be useful in several ways. Systematically gathering success stories can help to quickly and easily discover what is working and what is not working well in a program, illustrate results and accomplishments in a way that is interesting and compelling, increase the knowledge base of an organization, provide models and examples to motivate and guide others, meet demands quickly and practically to evaluate the success or failure of a new initiative. A 10 step guide to gathering and documenting success stories and examples of completed success stories from the WISEWOMAN program will be reviewed. A planning tool for dissemination of promising program practices to various audiences will be demonstrated.
Resources
- The Success Case Method- Robert Brinkerhoff
- Lewis, SA, Johnson VR, Farris RP, Will JC. Using success stories to share knowledge and lessons learned in health promotion. Journal of Women’s Health 13(5) 616-624, 2004.
- WISEWOMAN Works - A Collection of Success Stories on Empowering Women to Stop Smoking http://www.cdc.gov/wisewoman/pdf/vol_2/success_stories_vol2.pdf
Session Materials
