125 - Community Listening Sessions: Empowering Community Voices to Address Health Disparities

Abstract Information: The equitable inclusion of community voice and qualitative data is essential for building capacity in the nonprofit sector, especially in addressing health disparities. Prevention Works Inc. and Everett Evaluation collaborated to review community health data and identify populations experiencing health disparities. This led to the implementation of community listening sessions to understand specific needs, utilizing an approach that values community knowledge and experiences. Participants in this session will gain practical knowledge on how to implement listening sessions in their own communities.

Community listening sessions challenge the problematic practice of evaluators collecting information without valuing community expertise. Instead, it empowers communities, ensuring their active participation in the evaluation process and compensating them for their time and knowledge. Sharing the information learned with the community promotes transparency, accountability, and trust between agencies and communities.

This approach aligns with AEA’s Guiding Principles for Evaluators, respecting the rights and dignity of individuals and communities involved in the evaluation process. It has significant implications for evaluation practice, providing practical value and potential for improving the relationship between nonprofit agencies and the communities they serve. Ultimately, this approach promotes equity and justice in the research process, elevating the voices and experiences of individuals and communities.

Relevance Statement: The story of individuals and communities is at the heart of the approach of community listening sessions presented in this roundtable. This roundtable presentation will provide time for discussion and reflection about how to implement listening sessions to gather information and community experiences. The presenters represent the external evaluator and the nonprofit organization who worked together to design and implement community listening sessions. The roundtable will present both the nonprofit organization and the evaluator’s point of view, including lessons learned and best practices.

This work is relevant to the field because it challenges the historically problematic practices of researchers and evaluators collecting information from communities without adequately valuing their lived experiences and knowledge. Community listening sessions can be used by evaluators and their clients to provide a space for people most impacted by the evaluation and data collection to have their voices heard and their knowledge utilized. Nonprofit agencies can benefit from this approach because they can collect first-hand information from the individuals they serve, while respecting their autonomy and expertise. This approach also helps to build trust and foster positive relationships between the agency and the community.

This approach acknowledges that communities are experts in their own experiences. By training and paying community members to facilitate focus groups, listening sessions empower communities to take an active role in the data collection and ensures that they are compensated for their time and expertise. Sharing the information learned with the community back also allows for transparency and accountability, ensuring that the work is conducted with the community's best interests in mind.

By providing a checklist, timeline, and lessons learned, participants in this roundtable can walk away with practical knowledge on how to implement listening sessions in their own communities. The roundtable will also allow time for discussion about the approach where participants can share their successes and challenges implementing community listening sessions, ask questions, and share best practices.

This approach reflects relevant standards of quality in theory, methods, and practice. In particular, it aligns with the American Evaluation Association's Guiding Principles for Evaluators: Respect for People, which emphasizes the importance of respecting the rights and dignity of individuals and communities involved in the evaluation process. Additionally, this approach aligns with the principles of participatory evaluation, which emphasizes the importance of involving community members in the evaluation process to ensure that their voices are heard and their needs are being met.

In conclusion, the information presented will highlight the importance of respecting the story of individuals and how to implement community listening sessions to gather information without causing harm. This approach has significant implications for evaluation theory and practice, as well as providing practical value to the audience. It reflects relevant standards of quality in theory, methods, and practice and has the potential to improve the relationship between nonprofit agencies and the communities they serve.