Building Capacity in a Community-Level Initiative The theme of this year’s conference, Context and Evaluation, has direct applicability to our work at YMCA of the USA. I’ll be talking to you about how we at Y-USA evaluate our Healthier Communitie s Initiatives given its primary focus in local communities with varying contexts. Andrea Lee, MPA YMCA of the USA American Evaluation Association Conference November 14, 2009

Overview Healthier Communities Initiatives ACHIEVE Pioneering Healthier Communities ACHIEVE Statewide Pioneering Healthier Communities Healthier Communities Initiatives As a brief overview: YMCA of the USA is the mission-driven national resource office for the 2600 local YMCAs around the country and has taken on the epidemic of obesity and physical inactivity with Activate America, which re-envisions the work of the YMCA. Internally: YMCAs are transforming themselves to better serve “health seekers”, or people who struggle to make healthy choices. This is done through relationship-building, facility design, and other innovations in the 600 local Ys around the country who’ve committed themselves to make the change. Externally: Y-USA has taken on 3 major initiatives under the umbrella title, Healthier Communities Initiatives, with the understanding that people’s lives don’t end when they leave the walls of the Y. The Healthier Communities Initiatives is what I’ll be focusing on today. In 2004, Y-USA launched Pioneering Healthier Communities – PHC -- with funding from CDC. PHC was developed with info from ALbD, Steps to a Healthier US, and REACH. Our initiatives expanded to include ACHIEVE, based in part on PHC and also funded by CDC, and most recently a Statewide PHC initiative funded by RWJF to not only focus on community based strategies but also using state-wide strategies to affect health and well-being.

Activate America: Inside and Outside the YMCA Socio-ecological model Individual Interpersonal Organizational Focus of Healthier Communities Initiatives Community The internal work of the Y focuses on the inner rings of the socio-ecological model – the individual, family, interpersonal relationships, and organizational change. The Healthier Communities Initiatives provides mini-grants to local Ys, who then convene their local leadership to change local policies and environments in the three outer rings. Communities create policy and environmental changes to promote healthy eating and physical activity within workplaces and other organizations, out in the community, and through public policy for a broad and sustainable impact. Public Policy

Healthier Communities Initiatives: 2004-2009 This map shows you where our 137 funded communities are located.

Physical activity successes Physical Education in schools ‘Complete Streets’ policies Developing new trails and sidewalks This is the goal – and examples of successes our communities have had in promoting physical activity: increasing time for phys ed before, during, or after school implementing ‘complete streets’ policies, which allow for walking, biking, and public transit developing new trails and sidewalks to improve the walk- or bikeability of communities

Healthy eating successes Community gardens Healthier vending options And, some examples of healthy eating successes: Through these types of policy and environmental changes, communities are able to help their residents make healthier choices in their everyday lives. Fresh produce in corner stores Restaurant menu-labeling

Community Process: Healthier Communities Initiatives So, how does this work happen? This process map shows the activities that teams go through as part of their participation in the initiative. To do this, we looked to the process map that describes the essential activities, or phases, that community teams experience as part of their participation in the Initiatives. Briefly, let’s walk through the phases: 1 – preparing to lead: teams are formed and gain the necessary understanding of policy change for healthy living 2 – planning for change: teams gather community data or conducts community assessments to decide what to target 3 – taking action: the team develops an action plan and begins to implement their strategies. 4 – getting results and growing and sustaining: team begins to get results and build their efforts. I’d like to talk more about the second phase, planning for change, to explore the challenges communities face around evaluation and how we hope to address those challenges.

Community Challenges Competing priorities Limited understanding of evaluation Lack of specific guidance from Y-USA Lack of emphasis on evaluation Here are some of the challenges we’ve heard from our communities: (through progress reports or 1-1 calls) Competing priorities: Since they have little time, they are extremely busy implementing the actual activities of their initiative and have little extra time to consider evaluation. Limited understanding of evaluation: the community leaders that form a leadership team come from various disciplines including public health, business, Lack of guidance: we’re just beginning to have the staff capacity to provide technical assistance in this area. Lack of emphasis: we’re continuing to explore how to impress upon communities the necessity to use evaluation to enhance their efforts.

Embedding evaluation into process Phase 2 Community Healthy Living Index A community assessment and planning process Benefits: Early win for team Builds consensus Prioritizes actions Educational tool Develops community understanding In this phase, teams look to existing initiatives, local data, and proven approaches to identify gaps and opportunities. A key way we’re building capacity for teams is through a tool developed by the YMCA with public health researchers at Stanford, Harvard, and St. Louis University called the Community Healthy Living Index, or CHLI. CHLI was developed specifically for communities in this work -- to assess their policies and environments that promote physical activity and healthy eating in the places where they live, work, learn, and play. It’s also designed to guide communities to action, with a discussion and planning guide is built into the tool. By building assessment into the process of our Initiative, we hope to encourage data collection and use by exposing communities to its relevance and utility. These are some of the benefits that communities have reported from using CHLI.

Community Healthy Living Index Here are some examples of questions from one of the sector assessments, the sectors being schools, afterschool/childcare, worksites, neighborhoods, and community-at-large. Below, you can see the results of the assessment – assessments are rated along these stages of development. This builds on community’s existing assets and identifies areas of opportunities. Even in the first stage, planting the seeds, when communities have many opportunities for improvement, this assessment still indicates for communities that they have relevant assets to leverage. Asset-based results

Wrap-up Building Capacity: Lessons Learned: Embed evaluation into a community planning process Prompt communities to demonstrate progress toward policy change Gather data to prove success and improve process Lessons Learned: Communities need structure to evaluate Data must be useful to communities To close, let’s review some ways that we hope to be building capacity in our communities: The Community Healthy Living Index gives you a good ideas of how we’re embedding evaluation in the planning process. We didn’t have time to fully explore the other two points, but I wanted to mention: We’re continually working on ways to help communities demonstrate their progress We’re currently collecting data on a relevant timeline for communities to get results back to program staff and communities to help them refine their results. Some lessons we’ve learned along the way: Communities need structure, or a guide to help them evaluate. Data must be kept useful and relevant to the communities to keep them actively engaged in evaluation activities.

Thank you! Andrea Lee – andrea.lee@ymca.net