Government Evaluation
My Nguyen, MPH, CHES (she/her/hers)
Evaluation Fellow
CDC
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Garry Lowry, MPH
Lead Health Scientist Evaluator
CDC, United States
Nicole Kuiper, MPH (she/her/hers)
Health Scientist Evaluator
CDC, United States
Nicole Kuiper, MPH (she/her/hers)
Health Scientist Evaluator
CDC, United States
Yulia Chuvileva, PhD, MA, MSc
Health Scientist
CDC, United States
Yulia Chuvileva, PhD, MA, MSc
Health Scientist
CDC, United States
Brigette Ulin, DrPH(c), MPH
Branch Chief
CDC, United States
Location: Grand Ballroom 10
Abstract: Social determinants of health (SDOH) are conditions that impact chronic disease disparities and health inequities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Closing the Gap with SDOH Accelerator Plans grant funded 56 recipients to develop implementation-ready plans to address SDOH.
Given the interdisciplinary nature of programs to impact SDOH and improve health equity, success stories can serve as a powerful evaluation tool for programmatic improvement. This roundtable will introduce the success stories from the SDOH Accelerator Plans grant as a case example to highlight benefits and limitations of using success stories in evaluation.
Critical questions will be posed to gather perspectives on when and how success stories can inform evaluation design relative to other methods and how funders can provide tools to support success story design. All participants will share and gain critical insights on the utility of success stories in evaluation decision-making and future programmatic implementation efforts.
Relevance Statement: Differences in social determinants of health (SDOH) contribute to the stark and persistent chronic disease disparities in the United States among racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, systematically limiting opportunities for members of some groups to live healthily. Health inequities have persisted across generations because of structural policies and practices that have systematically limited health access and opportunities. To maximize public health impact, policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) strategies and activities through community health assessment and long-range planning have the potential to improve SDOH in communities with the poorest health outcomes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Closing the Gap with Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) Accelerator Plans grant funded 56 recipients in state, local, and tribal jurisdictions to develop implementation-ready plans to address SDOH. Recipients collaborate with multisectoral partners including public health, government, business, non-profit, healthcare, housing, transportation, and social services. In collaboration with their partners, recipients develop implementation-ready SDOH Accelerator Plans. The purpose of these plans is to help accelerate future action that prevent and improve chronic disease outcomes among persons experiencing health disparities and inequities.
In addition to submitting their plans, recipients also submit stories to share successes, challenges they have encountered, and lessons learned that will help inform future evaluation findings. Success stories can be powerful narrative tools to communicate program’s accomplishments to various audiences, such as Congressional members, funders, and the public. Success stories provide valuable insights to illuminate the nuanced richness of lived experience and contributes to the contextual interpretation of findings. However, success stories can be prone to bias as they can exclude unfavorable findings and unintended program shortcomings that are valuable to program evaluation and improvement.
Evaluating the progress of planning for future implementation and engagement with key partners to implement PSE changes can be challenging in practice. The interdisciplinary and cross-cutting nature of SDOH creates complexities for assessing program success, especially in early stages of program development. This discussion on using success stories to evaluate programmatic efforts will crowdsource lessons learned and promising practices. This discussion can help inform future program design efforts to support approaches to tackle cross-cutting issues, such as SDOH. This roundtable aims to problem-solve by allowing participants to share similar challenges and lessons learned from their work.