14 - Evaluation Lessons Learned After One Year of Implementing a Multi-year PS&E Initiative: Evaluator and Funder Perspectives

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) engaged Heath Resources in Action (HRiA), a non-profit consultant, to partner in a multi-year evaluation of four organizational grantee initiatives across several sectors: nutrition and food insecurity, child and family homelessness, air quality and environmental justice. The aim of the evaluation was to establish shared measures to assess policy, systems and environmental (PSE) change while also telling the individual story of each initiative’s progress. Grantees, in collaboration with the funder and consultant, agreed on four cross-cutting levers of systems change during collaborative learning sessions to track both foundational and initiative-level progress. The identified levers of change are: 1) Community Empowerment and Leadership; 2) Cross-sector Partnerships; 3) Evidence for Action; and 4) Tactics to Engage Decision-makers. The evaluation includes an annual documentation survey and qualitative interviews. Lessons learned from the funder perspective in the first year of the grant highlighted the importance of capturing implementation-level details in order to understand the progress and evolution, both individually and collectively, toward PSE change. Lessons learned from the evaluator perspective included the need to develop shared levers to describe the collective progress of the grant portfolio towards PSE change while also telling the story of each individual grantee’s work. This poster will describe lessons learned in Year One from both the funder and evaluator perspective on the approach to capturing implementation-level details and developing shared measures and plans for moving forward in the multi-year evaluation.