Laura Leviton

• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Background: From 2003 to 2008, a total of 25 cross-sector, multidisciplinary community partnerships funded through the Active Living by Design (ALbD) national program designed, planned, and implemented policy and environmental changes, with complementary programs and promotions. Purpose: This paper describes the use of concept mapping methods to...

Beginning in 2003, Active Living by Design (ALbD) established innovative approaches across 25 communities to increase physical activity through community design, public policies, programming, and communication strategies. The complexity of the ALbD projects called for a mixed-methods evaluation to understand implementation as well as perceived and...

From 2003 to 2008, a total of 25 cross-sector, multidisciplinary community partnerships funded through the Active Living by Design (ALbD) national program designed, planned, and implemented policy and environmental changes, with complementary programs and promotions. This paper describes the use of concept mapping methods to gain insights into prom...

Aims: The Early Assessment of Programs and Policies to Prevent Childhood Obesity project identified environmental and policy initiatives addressing childhood obesity. Methods: The systematic screening and assessment method, which includes an evaluability assessment, or an on-site pre-evaluation, was utilized to identify environmental and policy aft...

Evidence-based technical assistance may be needed to implement recent federal policy to prevent childhood obesity through the schools. The Healthy Schools Program is the largest school-based obesity prevention program in the United States. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the role of the program's training and technical assistance and...

Federal and state policies identify schools as a setting to prevent childhood obesity, but schools need better health-promoting strategies. The objective of this study was to evaluate interim progress in schools receiving hands-on training from the Healthy Schools Program, the nation's largest school-based program aimed at preventing childhood obes...

Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities (HKHC) is an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to prevent obesity among high-risk children by changing local policies, systems, and environments. In 2009, 105 community partnerships applied for funding from HKHC. Later that year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released recommend...

A US federal mandate that school districts devise and implement local wellness policies (LWPs) has potential widespread impact on the nutritional content of foods and beverages available in schools and on the amount of physical activity that students engage in; however, evidence concerning the mandate's effectiveness is limited. This study describe...

Quality improvement (QI) research is often hampered by the complexity of the systems and context in which QI is attempted. Better classification of QI can alleviate this problem and help to build generalisable knowledge.

If a quality improvement is found effective in one setting, would the same effects be found elsewhere? Could the same change be implemented in another setting? These are just two of the 'generalisation questions' which decision-makers face in considering whether to act on reported improvement. In this paper, some of the issues are considered and a...

The authors describe application of the Systematic Screening and Assessment (SSA) Method to an initiative called the Early Assessment of Programs and Policies to Prevent Childhood Obesity. Over a 2-year period, a national network of practitioners, policy makers, and funders nominated programs and policies across five substantive areas: school distr...

The authors present both impressions and evidence about early impacts of the Systematic Screening and Assessment (SSA) Method as applied to childhood obesity prevention. They describe how the approach has rapidly identified policy and environmental interventions that are promising and worthy of further study, contributed to field knowledge about ch...

Purpose Food environments affect people's food-related decisions, consumption, and health outcomes. This paper critiques instruments available for assessing food environments to help researchers, practitioners, and community organizations select those that best meet their needs, resources, and level of expertise. Gaps and recommendations for future...

Purpose Designing programs for mid-life to older adults whose sedentary behaviors are associated with increased health risks is crucial. The U.S. Task Force on Community Preventive Services strongly recommends individually adapted behavior change programs as one approach to increasing physical activity in communities. The purpose of this study is t...

Evaluability assessment, also commonly known as exploratory evaluation, has assisted the field of public health to improve programs and to develop a pragmatic, practice-based research agenda. Evaluability assessment was originally developed as a low-cost pre-evaluation activity to prepare better for conventional evaluations of programs, practices,...

On January 16 and 17, 2008, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation convened a forum of researchers and practitioners working on the issue of childhood obesity to discuss the issues related to surveillance, screening, and reporting of children's BMI. Because obesity has become a major concern of the foundation, it seemed essential to understand the use...

Active for Life® (AFL) was a large (n = 8159) translational initiative to increase physical activity (PA) in midlife and older adults. Translational research calls for a shift in emphasis from just understanding what works (efficacy) to also understanding how it works in more ‘real world’ settings. This article describes the process evaluation desi...

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation requested this utilization-focused evaluation of its Active Living Research (ALR) program. This evaluation reports on the trajectory of influence of past and future ALR outcomes on field-building and policy contributions as well as on possible users of completed and disseminated ALR products. In 2006 and 2007, key...

Most evidence-based programs are never translated into community settings and thus never make a public health impact. Active for Life (AFL) was a 4-year translational initiative using a pre-post, quasi-experimental design. Data were collected from 2003 to 2007. Analyses were conducted in 2005 and 2008. Nine lead organizations at 12 sites participat...

Understanding the process by which research is translated into practice is limited. This study sought to examine how interventions change during implementation. Data were collected from July 2005 to September 2007. A real-time and cross-case comparison was conducted, examining ten interventions designed to improve health promotion in primary care p...

Disclaimer: The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Evaluability assessments (EAs) provide a systematic way to determine if a program or policy is ready for rigorous evaluation and identifies what refinements may be needed pr...

As people became aware of the epidemic of childhood obesity, policy makers and public health practitioners called for the schools to change their environments to encourage healthy eating and increased physical activity. This article describes recent policy developments and clarifies what can and cannot be expected of schools based on existing and e...

Translating efficacious interventions into practice within community settings is a major public health challenge. We evaluated the effects of 2 evidence-based physical activity interventions on self-reported physical activity and related outcomes in midlife and older adults. Four community-based organizations implemented Active Choices, a 6-month,...

The evidence-based practice movement has become an important feature of health care systems and health care policy. Within this context, the APA 2005 Presidential Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice defines and discusses evidence-based practice in psychology (EBPP). In an integration of science and practice, the Task Force's report describes psyc...

In this article, we present a framework to assess non-profit agencies' levels of development and capacity. The framework is useful for evaluation because it helps to predict and explain program implementation. The framework is useful for program planning because planners must select organizations that are suitable to implement programs, and sometim...

An issue of friendly disagreement between Cooper and Arkin (1981) and Cook and Leviton (1980) involves the definition of meta-analysis. Cooper and Arkin favor a definition stressing the degree of quantification in review studies, while we claim that studies labeled as “meta-analysis” are differentiated from other reviews in terms of the aggregation...

Developing countries have minimal resources for HIV prevention. Thus it is imperative that research hone in on the processes that have affected behavior change. This paper reviews the literature on "what works" in industrialized countries speculates on some likely "universals" concerning factors affecting HIV acquisition and identifies important va...

In this report, we present a case study of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Faith in Action grant initiative. Faith in Action was created to help meet the needs of people with chronic physical and mental disabilities by funding interfaith volunteer caregiving programs nationwide. Results from two evaluations of these programs are discussed. The...

Interactive online diaries are a novel approach for evaluating project implementation and provide real-time communication between evaluation staff members and those implementing a program. Evaluation teams can guide the lines of inquiry and ensure that data are captured as implementation develops. When used together with conventional evaluation str...

Measurement Issues in Aging and Physical Activity breaks new ground with a discussion of multicultural factors related to physical activity promotion and intervention. Ideas include using culture as a catalyst for active living and using culture-based physical activity as an alternative approach to promotion of active living. The reference further...

This article makes a case for cluster-randomized trials to encourage evidence-based practice in medical care. The case rests on theoretical, empirical, and methodological grounds. To illustrate, we describe two recent studies. The first trial, with participation by 27 tertiary care hospitals, concerned methods to encourage a relatively simple, low-...

Maintaining a discovery capacity in evaluation promotes better fit between the evaluation and the dynamic, complex contexts of community-based programs. A continuing discovery capacity also fits well with the long-term, systemic changes to which these programs aspire.

To test a multifaceted collaborative quality improvement intervention designed to promote evidence based surfactant treatment for preterm infants of 23-29 weeks' gestation. Cluster randomised controlled trial. 114 neonatal intensive care units (which treated 6039 infants of 23-29 weeks gestation born in 2001). Process of care measures: proportion o...

To describe the timing of initial surfactant treatment for high-risk preterm infants in routine practice and compare these findings with evidence from randomized trials and published guidelines. Data from the Vermont Oxford Network Database for infants who were born from 1998 to 2000 and had birth weights 401 to 1500 g and gestational ages of 23 to...

In many respects, obstetrics, perinatology, and neonatology have been at the forefront in the dissemination and uptake of evidence-based medicine. The work of the Cochrane Collaboration began largely with the need to systematize the evidence on these subjects. Among other organizations, the National Perinatal Information Service and the Vermont Oxf...

One paragraph in House (1995) probably best captures what we suspect are the misunderstandings and the real differences between his position and ours. In responding to our previous writings, he says of us:Believing that evaluators cannot or should not weight and balance interests within a given context … suggests that human choice is based on non-r...

Building collective capacity can improve the quality of evaluators’ work, as well as their quality of life. Strengthening collective capacity will help evaluation to influence the policy and program worlds, which continue to misunderstand, misuse, and sometimes fear evaluation. Building this capacity means strengthening the relationships among eval...

Background: Patient delay in seeking health care for heart attack symptoms is a continuuing problem in the United States. Methods: Investigators conducted focus groups (N = 34; 207 participants) in major U.S. regions (NE, NW, SE, SW, MW) as formative evaluation to develop a multi-center randomized community trial (the REACT Project). Target grou...

To determine Alabama's primary care physicians' knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding cancer genetics. A questionnaire was mailed to a random sample of 1,148 physicians: family and general practitioners, internists, and obstetrician-gynecologists. Of the surveyed physicians, 22.1% responded. Of the respondents, 63% to 85% obtained family hi...

Background Few studies of worker training have addressed the impact on participant's health and safety behaviors and efforts to change health and safety conditions at the workplace. The present study is an evaluation of these impacts as reported by workers and managers.Methods The UAB/CLEAR program has trained over 1,000 participants since 1992. A...

Workplace safety training programs initiated by unions have gained strength and numbers over the past ten years. Union-initiated peer train ing offers a new twist on joint labor-management health and safety pro grams, which have become an important area of labor-management coop eration. Peer trainers play a major role in the new partnerships, as ma...

The proportion of times that participants used condoms during the recall period is the measure most often used to assess the impact of an intervention designed to prevent the transmission of HIV through sexual contact. Here, it is argued that researchers, service providers, and policy makers should consider using a regression-based approach to cont...

A case is made for using the technique of evaluability assessment to introduce students to the field of evaluation. Procedures for directing, instructing, and supervising evaluability assessments in the classroom setting are described, along with techniques for adapting the method to the students' level of training, mix of experiences, and duration...

Theory-based models of HIV prevention need to be tested using appropriate measures with populations at high risk. Data from interviews with 4036 women recruited from facilities and randomly sampled from high-risk communities were used to examine the mediating variables specified by the Transtheoretical Model (TM). The analysis aimed to test the rel...

The ultimate goal of HIV prevention interventions is to reduce the spread of HIV; however, the effectiveness of these programs is seldom assessed directly. Although direct measurement of an intervention's impact via HIV seroincidence monitoring is usually unfeasible, mathematical models can be used to estimate the number of infections averted by th...

Objective: To advocate the use of standard measures of sexual behavior in order to facilitate determining the extent to which an HIV-prevention intervention has changed participants' behavior. Methods: The need for a standardized minimum data set is reviewed and a candidate data set is proposed. Results: The following data constitute the proposed m...

Choosing outcome measures for HIV prevention intervention studies is difficult because of the multiplicity of behavioral and epidemiologic factors that affect HIV transmission. In attempts to address some of these factors, summary risk indices have been proposed as outcome measures for some intervention studies. These summary risk indices have suff...

The Drake Chemical Workers' Health Registry combined notification of workers about bladder cancer risk with access to a free program for screening and diagnosis. Evaluation of the project has given rise to several findings and new research questions. Findings in this article illustrate the following evaluation issues: 1) studying the combination of...

In this article, the authors present a mechanism for client tracking linked to a management information system (MIS). The MIS can serve several evaluation functions: assistance to program management in enhancing services, evaluation of the dynamics of client flow through the system, and measurement of interagency coordination for the service popula...

Outreach is a term frequently used to describe active recruitment of program participants and is a common element of many social service and disease prevention programs. Outreach as a project element has received renewed attention with the advent of new federal demonstration projects to serve groups that are difficult to locate, difficult to recrui...

Experience in evaluating AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) prevention projects leads us suggest several conceptual, measurement, and analysis recommendations: 1. follow the logic of prevention programs to translate effect sizes into a yield for AIDS risk reduction; 2. assume that secular trends toward risk reduction will reduce or disguise...

"Foundations of Program Evaluation" heralds a thorough exploration of the field of program evaluation—looking back on its origins, the accumulated experiences of evaluators, and their profound influences on the development of the field. By summarizing, comparing, and contrasting the work of seven major theorists of program evaluation, this book pro...

: This study evaluates two AIDS risk-reduction interventions targeted at homosexual and bisexual men. Participants were randomized into two peer-led interventions: both involved a lecture on 'safer sex', and one provided a skills-training component during which men could discuss and rehearse the negotiation of safer sexual encounters. Follow-up dat...

Many occupational epidemiology studies require complete and accurate information on tobacco use to control for confounding by smoking and to assess interactions of smoking with workplace exposures. This paper reviews and evaluates the availability, reliability, validity, and efficiency of the various data sources and techniques for obtaining indivi...

As a result of the AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) epidemic, many community health agencies are faced with the task of planning and implementing programs to prevent or reduce the risks of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) infection. Furthermore, the urgency of AIDS will force community groups to develop prevention programs prior to an a...

Federal evaluations in education contributed in numerous and important ways to changes in law, regulation, and management. Information about implementation contributed most often, but information about outcomes, cost, and federal administration also made contributions. The findings of the present study are surprising in light ofprevious research th...

Evaluation findings will probably make a long-term contribution to the improvement of social services and programs when they are cited in the textbooks used to train human services professionals. Although there was some variability, evaluations were nonetheless cited with reasonable frequency in a sample of introductory and advanced text books in s...

An area of concernfor evaluation research is the extent to which evaluations are utilized in policy and program development and change. The current review critically discusses definition of utilization and methodsfor detecting utilization. Five "clusters" of variables have been found to affect utilization. These are: (1) the relevance of evaluation...

Meta-analysis is the name given to a set of techniques for reviewing research in which the data from different studies are statistically combined. Meta-analysts have criticized the more traditional qualitative methods of review on three principal grounds: (1) that relevant information is ignored in favor of a simplistic box count of the number of s...

Incluye bibliografía e índice