Evaluating Statewide Foundations' Goals to Promote Health and Health Equity: Approaches, Findings, and Lessons Learned

The evaluation of the Connecticut Health Foundation’s goal to advance health equity found that the foundation was able to increase enrollment in affordable health insurance plan; support the integration of physical health, behavioral health, and oral health care services and optimal role of the safety net in health care reform; strengthen leadership and advocacy capacity for health equity; and help hold systems accountable to health equity. The foundation accomplished this through a three-pronged approach that includes grantmaking, policy advocacy, and strategic communications. A case study of The California Endowment’s Health in All Policies Framework found that the foundation successfully helped integrate health and wellness into the City of Los Angeles’ general plan, shifted perceptions of local politicians about health, promoted the value of health equity, and increased community engagement in city planning processes. The evaluations helped identify capacities and other contextual factors that contributed to these foundations’ success, and raised questions about the role of foundations as leaders, brokers, capacity-builders, and grantmakers in effecting policy and systems change. The evaluations also played a major role in informing the foundations’ future directions. The evaluators for both efforts worked closely with the foundations’ leadership to develop a framework that guided the development of measures and data collection strategies. The goal of this session is to describe and discuss the elements of an evaluation designed to understand and assess policy and systems change, the capacities needed to undertake such an evaluation, and lessons learned by the evaluators.