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Using Qualitative and Quantitative Data to Evaluate Training for Home Visitors and Community Health Workers

Janis A. Prince, PhD, MMFT and Darlene L. Shearer, DrPH. Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies, University of South Florida, 13201 Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, Tampa, FL 33612-3805, 813 974-8610, jprince@hsc.usf.edu

The use of Community Health Workers (CHWs) has been touted as an effective approach to address racial/ethnic disparities, to improve health outcomes, and to engage disenfranchised populations. In response to this need the number of CHW and Home Visitor training programs has increased dramatically in recent years. Yet, evaluation studies of the effectiveness of CHW training have suffered from poor research design, a heavy reliance on anecdotal evidence, and a focus on individual changes rather than examining the impact workers make on specific health outcomes. The Maternal and Child Services Workforce Development Program is a 21 college credit training program for workers who receive specialized training to provide support services to childbearing families and children birth to age 5. The training program is being pilot-tested in three community colleges in Florida. This presentation will describe the evaluation component of the Workforce Development Program, its research methodology, the logic model, and the data sources used to evaluate four levels of outcomes: i) individual worker knowledge, practice, self-efficacy, satisfaction and career goals; ii) changes within employer agencies with regard to worker assignments and career opportunities; iii) clients’ service utilization and satisfaction; iv) programmatic processes. The use of quantitative and qualitative techniques for data collection in program evaluation will be described.

Learning Objectives:

Keywords: Evaluation, Community Health Promoters

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: Grants

Topics in MCH Data and Epidemiology

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