What we did
The CAPTURE Project, the Propel Centre for Population Health Impact and the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control at the Public Health Agency of Canada held a Knowledge Exchange Forum in Ottawa on March 29 – 30, 2010.
The Forum addressed how to advance the documentation, sharing and use of evaluation findings to improve program practice in chronic disease prevention and health promotion. Discussions enabled participants to identify steps to promote and sustain both learning and evaluation cultures in public health systems.
What we learned
Discussions indicate that participants are keen on developing a culture of evaluation for learning and are excited about:
1. Learning from Failure: The sharing of “failures” can serve as a basis for the improvement of public health practice. Separating evaluation for accountability and evaluation for learning is one way to encourage organizations to enter evaluations with more openness and curiosity.
2. Identifying end-users and their information needs: Identifying user needs early in the evaluation process will help tailor the collected information to their needs. End users may include health promotion practitioners, decision-makers, program managers and funders.
3. Change in the role of the evaluator: The traditional role of an evaluator is to be an objective collector of data. Expanding the role of the evaluator to take on roles such as facilitator, relationship-builder, connector and organizational consultant may expand their capacity for learning and improve the usefulness of the data they collect.
4. Embedding evaluation throughout an organization: Evaluative thinking becomes more natural when evaluation is embedded into all aspects of an organization’s work. Implementation of evaluations is made easier when evaluation is in practice at all levels of an organization.
5. Sharing the evaluation results: Evaluation reports can benefit from an implementation strategy and examples of real-world experience to promote learning. A meaningful conversation with stakeholders can foster greater knowledge exchange through social interactions that challenge and delve into the evaluation results.
What we will do
CAPTURE has been designed to serve a continuous learning function and the KE Forum has confirmed the need for this kind of approach. The CAPTURE Platform will aim to provide:
- Evaluation planning features to encourage users to determine the information needs of their target audience.
- Support, training and guidance to help organizations embed evaluation in all their practices.
- A forum where evaluation results can be shared.
- Planning and evaluation features that provide instructions on thinking about and developing dissemination strategies.
Check out the attached report for more insight on the themes discussed in the forum.
Attachments
KE Forum Report Evaluation for Learning
