Local voices talking it out: Organizational self-assessment tool to promote dialogue and shared understanding about how to advance health and equity

Abstract Information: Advancing organizational systems change requires a comprehensive understanding of where the organization is starting. Organizational self-assessments are pragmatic tools often used to understand current state and inform future priorities. However, self-assessments are only useful if they assess the “right” things for the organizational context and if, when completed, there is an accurate and locally meaningful assessment of current state. To ensure the assessment is measuring the right things and accurately capturing current state, strong engagement of diverse voices throughout the organization during tool development is key. This process can help to ensure that strategic priorities are informed by staff voices, and not only set by organizational leaders. For evaluators, partnering to create tools for organizations to use, it is critical to understand the unique circumstances of the organizational setting and gather multiple perspectives to ensure the tool will be used. This session will explore how development and implementation of an organizational self-assessment was used to elevate a wide range of diverse perspectives to ensure the organization was measuring key concepts in assessing current state and identifying strategic priorities for health and equity efforts. In this session, we will provide a case example of how diverse perspectives were elevated to create a customized and context-specific organizational self-assessment tool that assesses the status of each institution’s work to advance health equity and well-being in their organization and in their communities. The tool was developed in close partnership with the Cooperative Extension System (CES)—a large national system—to align with a national vision for its health equity and well-being work and was developed to be used by local and state Extension programs across its 112 Land Grant Universities to identify opportunities for capacity building and improvement. Presenters will: (1) share the process to engage diverse perspectives to develop and test the tool and share lessons learned from the process; (2) share how the tool was customized for local context across the national system navigating the tension between national and local values, priorities, and context; (3) reflect on the role of an evaluator in creating a sustainable tool with and for an organization that will used beyond the evaluation timeline. Participants will be invited to reflect on their own experiences and share insights and feedback about their efforts to engage a range of diverse voices in evaluating progress and setting strategic priorities.