Voices in a Crowd: Best Practices for Centering Community Voices in a Growing, Multi-Cohort Evaluation

Abstract Information: The Massachusetts Community Health and Healthy Aging Funds (the Funds) are a statewide program with the mission to disrupt and remove barriers to health by investing in community-centered innovative change approaches targeting the root causes of inequitable health outcomes. This effort is funded through a Determination of Needs system from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Since 2020, a total of $30 million has been awarded to two cohorts (with a third cohort being funded in mid-2024), comprising 56 grantees working with over 70 community partners. Awards range from one to five years and are given in the categories of Healthy Aging; Policy, Systems, and Environmental (PSE) Change; and Community Health Improvement Planning (CHIP). The desired impact of the Funds is to advance health, racial, and age equity in Massachusetts through systems change. Our collaborative grantmaking and evaluation team, based at the public health institute Health Resources in Action (HRiA), serves as the fiscal agent, facilitator of the planning and implementation of the Funds, as well as the evaluator. In this roundtable discussion, HRiA will discuss our evaluation approach and how it has been evolved to ensure grantee and community voices are centered within a growing cohort of diverse grantees. Discussion will include reflecting on the challenges and opportunities of working with cohorts of multiple grantees focused on various topics (e.g., housing, mental health, transportation); how to measure and communicate impact of upstream approaches; and approaches for balancing grantee burden, staff capacity and input of grantees (via an evaluation workgroup). Following our presentation, we will facilitate a conversation with participants to explore methods of prioritizing the voices of those on the ground in large, multi-partner evaluations. Roundtable participants will have the opportunity to discuss the following questions: • How can evaluators balance grantee burden with collecting enough data to show impact? • How can evaluators balance centering grantee and community voice without tokenizing or retraumatizing community? • How can an evaluation be successfully scaled up while still centering grantee and community voice? • How can evaluators effectively collect and communicate data to support the mission of their funding strategies? • How can evaluators engage grantee partners, the funder/ philanthropy, and other colleagues doing similar work to build momentum for shared goals?