New and emerging perspectives in community-engaged public health evaluations

Abstract Information: Evaluators and partners in King County, Washington are amplifying diverse voices in evaluation by engaging the community in power sharing and building the capacity of new evaluators. Building trust with communities, engaging diverse perspectives in evaluation, and employing community-based data collection methods require time and intentionality. At the same time, we are facing a declining public health workforce which limits our capacity for meaningful community engagement. How can evaluators sustain community engagement? In this session, King County evaluators demonstrate approaches to engaging new perspectives in evaluation by partnering with and training emerging evaluators via 1) a Community Health Advocate project featuring extensive feedback loops and centering co-learning and co-creating evaluation products, and 2) projects training students to conduct community-engaged evaluations, including youth-led programs. Facilitators will lead discussion on successes and lessons learned training the next generation of evaluators. Participants will be better equipped to work with emerging evaluators to both deepen community-engaged evaluations and build longer-term capacity for the field of public health.