99 - Field Assessment Tool (FASST): A method for monitoring the progress of field building efforts.

Abstract Information: Field building involves sustained collaboration among parties with complementary capacities, to address complex social challenges (Grant, Wilkinson, & Butts, 2020). Non-profits and foundations that adopt a field building strategy use their resources to seed, promote, and scale up practices that can build momentum for long term impact. New Hampshire’s Endowment for Health (EH) engages in field building by investing in systems-change capacity in five priority areas (i.e., “fields”): Children’s Behavioral Health, Early Childhood, Healthy Aging, Health Equity, and Health Policy. EH’s field building strategy involves creating strong coalitions and networks, enhancing local research and knowledge base, growing leadership and advocacy capacity, developing shared measures and data-based decision making, elevating cultural awareness and competence, and supporting other systems- and social-change capacities. The Behavioral Health Improvement Institute (BHII.org) utilizes knowledge translation, implementation science, and evaluation to improve behavioral health practice and outcomes for underserved and marginalized populations. In 2015, EH approached BHII about developing a tool to assess the current status and longitudinal progress of its priority fields, to help inform more strategic allocation of its assets. Using the scholarly literature as a guide, along with input from EH staff, we created what eventually became known as the Field Assessment Tool (FASST; Fauth, Phillips, and Nordstrom, 2016), which includes a set of quantitative, anchored rating scales that are scored by evaluators, based on key informant interviews. Key informants are selected for their knowledge and involvement in the target field, and their ability to represent a variety of sectors, regions, and roles in the work. Informants are interviewed individually for approximately 60 minutes using a semi-structured protocol. Each item response is coded using an anchored rating scale to generate a numeric “score,” as well as culled for qualitative themes that enrich narrative reporting of the results. FASST scores can be summarized at the item and domain level by averaging scores across key informants/items. Qualitative themes contextualize the ratings and provide the basis for a narrative explanation of the findings. The resulting report is presented in slide/discussion format first to the key informant group as a kind of “member check” (Birt et al., 2016), then to relevant strategic committees of the EH, and subsequently to statewide coalitions as requested by EH. A narrative report is submitted to EH and archived on their website. Since 2016, BHII has utilized the FASST with one of EH’s priority fields each year, accumulating a longitudinal record of progress across several of these target areas. This demonstration will include presentation of the tool, reporting formats (including data visualization), key methodological choices, and utilization to stimulate field development. References Birt L., Scott S., Cavers D., Campbell C., & Walter F. (2016). Member checking: A tool to enhance trustworthiness or merely a nod to validation? Qualitative Health Research, 26(13), 1802-1811. doi:10.1177/1049732316654870 Fauth, J., Phillips, M., & Nordstrom, A. (June, 2016). Field Assessment Tool (FASST) Manual. Unpublished report, commissioned by New Hampshire Endowment for Health.