Evaluation of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Evaluation Fellowship Program.

OBJECTIVE: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) Evaluation Fellowship Program is a 2-year fellowship that includes training, placement with a CDC program, and professional development funds. We evaluated whether the program contributed to CDC's evaluation capacity, prepared fellows for evaluation work, and contributed to their career advancement during its first 10 years. METHODS: We used a mixed-methods approach, including conducting an online survey and telephone interviews. External evaluators sent surveys to all 152 alumni and all 123 mentors who participated in the program from 2011 through 2020 (first 8 cohorts) and interviewed 9 mentors and 15 alumni. RESULTS: A total of 110 alumni (72.4%) and 44 mentors (35.8%) completed surveys. Of 44 mentors, most agreed their fellow(s) contributed to their program's overall evaluation capacity (90.9%) and its ability to do more evaluation (88.6%). Most (84.2%-88.1%) alumni agreed that the Evaluation Fellowship Program prepared them to apply the 6 skill sets that aligned with CDC's Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health. Support from the Fellowship office was significantly and positively correlated with performing evaluation tasks (ß = 0.25; P = .004) and alumni obtaining their first job (ß = 0.36; P < .001). Host program mentoring was significantly correlated with performing evaluation tasks (ß = 0.27; P = .02) and alumni obtaining their first job (ß = 0.34; P = .007). CONCLUSION: CDC's Evaluation Fellowship Program has made progress toward building CDC's evaluation capacity and preparing a public health workforce to use evaluation skills in various settings. A service-learning model that provides training and applied experiences could prepare a workforce to build evaluation capacity.

Preventing Childhood Adversity Through Economic Support and Social Norm Strategies.

Through the Essentials for Childhood program, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funds 7 state health departments (states) to address the urgent public health problem of adverse childhood experiences and child abuse and neglect, in particular. Through interviews and document reviews, the paper highlights the early implementation of 2 primary prevention strategies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's child abuse and neglect technical package with the greatest potential for broad public health impact to prevent adverse childhood experiences-strengthening economic supports and changing social norms. States are focused on advancing family-friendly work policies such as paid family and medical leave, livable wage policies, flexible and consistent work schedules, as well as programs and policies that strengthen household financial security such as increasing access to Earned Income Tax Credit. In addition, states are launching campaigns that focus on reframing the way people think about child abuse and neglect and who is responsible for preventing it. State-level activities such as establishing a diverse coalition of partners, program champions, and state action planning have helped to leverage and align resources needed to implement, evaluate, and sustain programs. States are working to increase awareness and commitment to multisector efforts that reduce adverse childhood experiences and promote safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments for children. Early learning from this funding opportunity indicates that using a public health approach, states are well positioned to implement comprehensive, primary prevention strategies and approaches to ensure population-level impact for preventing child abuse and neglect and other adverse childhood experience.

Three Cs of Translating Evidence-Based Programs for Youth and Families to Practice Settings.

Despite the growing number of evidence-based programs (EBPs) for youth and families, few are well-integrated in service systems or widely adopted by communities. One set of challenges to widespread adoption of EBPs relates to the transfer of programs from research and development to practice settings. This is often because program developers have limited guidance on how to prepare their programs for broad dissemination in practice settings. We describe Three Cs of Translation, which are key areas that are essential for developers to translate their EBPs from research to practice settings: (1) Communicate the underlying theory in terms easily understandable to end users, (2) Clarify fidelity and flexibility, and (3) Codify implementation lessons and examples. Program developers are in the best position to describe their interventions, to define intervention core components, to clarify fidelity and flexibility, and to codify implementation lessons from intervention studies. We note several advantages for developers to apply the Three Cs prior to intervention dissemination and provide specific recommendations for translation.

Evaluation of DELTA PREP: A Project Aimed at Integrating Primary Prevention of Intimate Partner Violence Within State Domestic Violence Coalitions.

BACKGROUND: Intimate partner violence (IPV) has been recognized as a public health problem since the late 20th century. To spur IPV prevention efforts nationwide, the DELTA PREP Project selected 19 state domestic violence coalitions to build organizational prevention capacity and catalyze IPV primary prevention strategies within their states. OBJECTIVE: DELTA PREP's summative evaluation addressed four major questions: (1) Did coalitions improve their prevention capacity during the project period? (2) Did coalitions serve as catalysts for prevention activities within their states during the project period? (3) Was initial prevention capacity associated with the number of prevention activity types initiated by coalitions by the end of the project? (4) Did coalitions sustain their prevention activities 6 months after the end of the project period? RESULTS: DELTA PREP achieved its capacity-building goal, with all 19 participant coalitions integrating prevention within their organizations and serving as catalysts for prevention activities in their states. At 6 months follow up, coalitions had sustained almost all prevention activities they initiated during the project. Baseline prevention capacity (Beginner vs. Intermediate) was not associated with the number of prevention activity types coalitions implemented by the end of the project. CONCLUSION: Service and treatment organizations are increasingly asked to integrate a full spectrum of prevention strategies. Selecting organizations that have high levels of general capacity and readiness for an innovation like integrating a public health approach to IPV prevention will likely increase success in building an innovation-specific capacity, and in turn implementing an innovation.

The DELTA PREP Initiative: Accelerating Coalition Capacity for Intimate Partner Violence Prevention.

BACKGROUND: The DELTA PREP Project aimed to build the prevention capacity of 19 state domestic violence coalitions by offering eight supports designed to promote prevention integration over a 3-year period: modest grant awards, training events, technical assistance, action planning, coaching hubs, the Coalition Prevention Capacity Assessment, an online workstation, and the online documentation support system. OBJECTIVES: Using quantitative and qualitative data, we sought to explain how coalitions integrated prevention within their structures and functions and document how DELTA PREP supports contributed to coalitions' integration process. RESULTS: We found that coalitions followed a common pathway to integrate prevention. First, coalitions exhibited precursors of organizational readiness, especially having prevention champions. Second, coalitions engaged in five critical actions: engaging in dialogue, learning about prevention, forming teams, soliciting input from the coalition, and action planning. Last, by engaging in these critical actions, coalitions enhanced two key organizational readiness factors-developing a common understanding of prevention and an organizational commitment to prevention. We also found that DELTA PREP supports contributed to coalitions' abilities to integrate prevention by supporting learning about prevention, fostering a prevention team, and engaging in action planning by leveraging existing opportunities. Two DELTA PREP supports-coaching hubs and the workstation-did not work as initially intended. From the DELTA PREP experience, we offer several lessons to consider when designing future prevention capacity-building initiatives.

The Data-to-Action Framework: A Rapid Program Improvement Process.

Although health education programs may benefit from quality improvement methods, scant resources exist to help practitioners apply these methods for program improvement. The purpose of this article is to describe the Data-to-Action framework, a process that guides practitioners through rapid-feedback cycles in order to generate actionable data to improve implementation of ongoing programs. The framework was designed while implementing DELTA PREP, a 3-year project aimed at building the primary prevention capacities of statewide domestic violence coalitions. The authors describe the framework's main steps and provide a case example of a rapid-feedback cycle and several examples of rapid-feedback memos produced during the project period. The authors also discuss implications for health education evaluation and practice.