Topic

Key Points Raised

Decision/Action

Welcome and Intros

We need to make sure the people who missed the meeting are caught up with our discussion.

Comments on Draft evaluation plan

Description of Plan

• Target population for Cancer Plan Minnesota is the whole state.  However, the plan does not directly affect the population. 
• The audience for the plan is policymakers, researchers, planners, providers and advocates.

Elizabeth will redraft the evaluation plan

Outcome Evaluation

Long term evaluation

• Difficult to attribute unless use time series
• Very hard to show attribution and long term results, but still important to include measures
• This program is not a direct intervention on individuals so not sure how to measure results.
• What is the intervention of this program?
• What are the starting points and end points?
• If you have a strong intervention, can show attribution for specific behaviors
• Have an ecologic problem of not having measures of individuals

Intermediate Outcomes

• In the immediate range, we want to show policy change and collaboration
• Intermediate outcomes could be?
• What does the plan do to Identify intermediate outcomes, for example, measures of public support?
• Does the plan measure community education or media awareness?

Short term outcomes

• These are environmental stuff
• What are the things we can directly affect?

What are the effects of the plan overall?

What are ‘spin-off effects” the unexpected and serendipitous?

Process Evaluation

Create a mission statement for the four priority area action groups, an intermediate mission that these groups will all be working toward, that can be measured in the intermediate range.

• How do action plans relate to the ultimate goals?
• Core team needs to keep group action related to mission statement
• Are the groups doing what they need to do?  How are private agendas and turf playing into the outcomes?
• For example, ‘working better by working together’ or ‘changing the environment’
• This mission would pull people out of silos and make them feel part of a greater whole. It would help operationalize the mission statement of the partnership. 
• Part of process evaluation would be to monitor ‘synergy’ and how well people are breaking out of ‘silos’

Use unobtrusive data collection to collect process evaluation data

• Committee action plan= process evaluation
• Measures of this are attendance and prestige of members, which can be efficient and meaningful data.
• Perhaps have phone interviews or debriefings with key individuals after meetings. 
• Measure of commitment of committee and whether they are unified in where they want to go?
• Minutes are a good source of evaluation but can be onerous
• Staff person to do qualitative observation on process of meeting
• Open ended interviews are good
• Questionnaires are bad
• Unobtrusive ways of collecting information are good.
• Tracking phone conversations at desk is good
• What are those start ideas to informal discussion?
• Validation through checks & triangulate by going back to people
• Summarize in bullets for reports.
• Internal staffing is a process issue

Context Evaluation

• Assess the context in which this happens
• This is a way of describing the program; Build into the process evaluation  
• What is going on out there that affects this working environment dramatically?

For example, note when CRC commercial started, Note smoke free policies, Addition of CRC to Hedis

• Helps build on interpretation of data years later

Next Steps

Do we need to meet more frequently than quarterly?

Plan a meeting for July