PHRI assesses the effectiveness of health policies and programs through a paradigm of cultural alignment. PHRI works with each program to develop how they want to evaluate their program, uses best practices in developing methods to collect data, and shared information in a confidential and appropriate manner. Our approach is adaptive to organizational needs related to program monitoring and evaluation, but typically involves the collection of process, outcome, and narrative information within the context of a mixed-methods evaluation approach in order to develop a complete picture of a program and its impact on individuals served.
Organizational Evaluation
PHRI has extensive experience with evaluation planning and implementation that is focused on an individual program or grant-funded activity, PHRI has also developed a framework for planning and implementing comprehensive, organizational evaluations that integrate data collected at the grant and program levels with overarching strategic plans at the organizational level.
The overall structure of a comprehensive organizational evaluation approach can be thought of as a pyramid, with organization-level goals laid out a strategic plan at the top. Those goals are achieved through the efforts of individual programs, which are each supported by grants, contracts, and other funding streams.
At the base, evaluation activities are designed to collect information required by funders for reporting purposes. This information is combined with information collected to answer program-level evaluation questions, which leads to the production of valuable information for stakeholders, but may be outside the scope of basic grant-level reporting needs. Finally, information collected for grant and program-level evaluation purposes feeds into the overarching strategic plan. This information provides the data needed for reporting purposes, provides insights in terms of program planning, implementation, and dissemination, which in turn flows up to support the tracking of progress toward strategic goals at the organization level.
Evaluation Tools and Frameworks
PHRI knows what kinds of data are needed to provide feedback to funders at the local, state, and national level, and have expertise in collecting, analyzing, and summarizing that data in ways that maximize its value for partners. This approach emphasizes alignment between funding requirements, program work plans, and organizational strategic plans. In the process, we work with partners to develop comprehensive program logic models and evaluation plans. Evaluation activities are rooted in proven evaluation approaches and frameworks (CDC Evaluation Framework, RE-AIM (TM), Meaningful Use, AHRQ Toolkit, etc.)