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Evaluation of a complex community-based intervention: An ecological approach and a case study

Richard S. Kurz, PhD, School of Public Health, Saint Louis University, 3545 Lafayette Avenue, Salus Center, St. Louis, MO 63104, 314-977-8111, kurzrs@slu.edu, Frances D. Butterfoss, PhD, Health Promotion/Disease Prevention, Center for Pediatric Research, Eastern Virginia Medical School, 855 W. Brambleton Ave, Norfolk, VA 23510, and Elizabeth Herman, MD, MPH, National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, MSE-17, Atlanta, GA 30333.

Many public health problems cannot be addressed by using a single approach or intervention but instead require multiple and complementary strategies directed at diverse groups of individuals in multiple venues. The formation of collaboratives or coalitions has become popular as a means of integrating, coordinating, and facilitating complex interventions. This presentation will address the challenges of conceptualizing and measuring the added benefits and outputs achieved through problem-focused coalitions, and will present, as a case study, the Controlling Asthma in St. Louis (CASL) project of the St. Louis Regional Asthma Consortium. The CASL project, part of the Controlling Asthma in American Cities Project, focuses on decreasing asthma morbidity among inner-city children through clinical, environmental, educational, and policy interventions. The presentation will describe the project's logic model, including the anticipated role and outputs of the coalition, the selection of milestones of coalition and project effectiveness, the choice of process indicators, measurement of short-term and long-term outcomes, and identified indicators of health effect. The presentation will also discuss the methods and tools selected to evaluate the activities and outputs of the coalition itself. (This submission might better be conceived as two presentations: one emphasizing coalition evaluation as it might apply to any situation and the other presenting the CASL case study of a multi-phase, ecological model of evaluation of a five component project.)

Learning Objectives: At the end of this session, participants will be able to do the following

Keywords: Evaluation, Coalition

Related Web page: www.asthma-stlouis.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: Part of my salary is each year is supported by the Controlling Asthma in St. Louis grant from the CDC.

Topics in MCH Data and Epidemiology

The 132nd Annual Meeting (November 6-10, 2004) of APHA