State level departments of health often provide community level programs through local organizations with limited evaluation capabilities. High quality and consistent reporting on program efforts and progress tends to be given lower consideration. Despite these difficulties, the New York State Healthy Heart Program (NYS/HHP) has successfully established a simple reporting system for its local cardiovascular health coalitions. Based on three years of experience using this, the NYS/HHP has improved the system by incorporating new areas of surveillance and utilizing a simple 'run-time' database system. NYS/HHP contractors now have the ability to track their own progress and generate on-demand reports. NYS/HHP administrators have a mechanism to link contractor activities with explicitly identified objectives and outcomes and has a uniform basis by which to compare the progress of disparate intervention programs. Finally, the automated nature of the data archiving system has greatly diminished the need for day to day data management. The results of these efforts have provided a simple and universal set of reporting requirements for all NYS/HHP contractors. Because of the success of these efforts, the New York State Tobacco Control Program has adopted this approach.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, participants will learn to create and utilize a simple computerized method of monitoring community level programs, as well as techniques to analyze the data collected.
Keywords: Evaluation, Data Collection
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.