Building Consensus and Shared Measurement for a Multi-level Outcome-based Evaluation Strategy to Assess Impact of a Denver Food Nutrition Disparities Initiative for Youth and Families

Abstract Information: The 2018 Denver Ballot Measure 302, known as the Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids (HFDK) initiative, represents a concerted effort to address food nutrition and access disparities among youth within the City and County of Denver. Administered by the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment (DDPHE), the initiative operates through competitive grant allocations to diverse non-profit organizations, local government entities, and public schools across the city. Since 2020, HFDK has funded several cohorts of grantees working in different sectors of Denver’s food system. CAI became the external evaluator in 2023, transitioning the evaluation to focus on cluster and multi-level assessment strategies to discern the initiative's impact on addressing persistent and emerging inequities around hunger within Denver. Key goals of CAI’s evaluation are to reduce grantees’ reporting burden, develop more standardization around the metrics grantees report on, especially outcome measures, and increase the engagement of diverse voices and perspectives in the evaluation process. This roundtable will open with a presentation on the methods CAI will be using to conduct HFDK’s cluster, multi-site, and multi-level evaluation, including: • Engaging critical stakeholders including the funder, board commissioners, and over 50 grant recipients during a strategic planning convening, • Updating HFDK’s key metrics to increase standardization across the strategies grantees and improve grantees’ ability to measure outcomes, • Gathering feedback on the revised metrics from the funder, board commissioners, HFDK evaluation committee, and the grantees to obtain their support, feasibility, and buy-in, and • Providing technical assistance and training to grantees to build their evaluation skills and support their HFDK data collection and reporting. Session attendees will participate in a discussion around the following questions that CAI is considering as we move into the next stage of the HFDK evaluation: • How do you measure impact for a complex, city-wide program when there is high diversity among grantees in the strategies and activities they are implementing, and the populations being served? • How do you tell the story about who is being served without burdening people with completing long and potentially identifiable forms? How do you track reach when there are different “units” of people who are being served (e.g., young children vs. adults vs. households)? • How do you measure topics like cultural appropriateness and food security, which are important social impact and justice issues but often challenging to evaluate? Engaging in this roundtable will give participants a chance to learn about the methods CAI has used to support citywide outcome evaluation as well as a chance to share their experiences and knowledge around multi-site and multi-level evaluations.