| Partners & Planning: roles, responsibilities, expertise available, and levels of commitment (funding, staff time, space, etc.) |
Engage partners in all study processes from inception to implementation to dissemination. |
How best to engage partners? What resources are available for the project and from what sources? What linkages and exchange efforts are needed? Does the CHC hub and its affiliates have the expertise to help guide the partners or should they be referred to other entities |
| Health Priority: can range from overall community well-being to focus on a particular condition or disease impacting a subset of the community |
Identify and define the health priority, who it impacts and its relative importance in their lives to foster participant buy-in and guide projects toward prevention, treatment, cure and/or care approaches |
What theories address the priority to guide program development and evaluation? What evidence or evidence-based approaches exist to help address the priority? What is the role of partners and other stakeholders in helping to maximize awareness about the issue? What community factors contribute to or detract from the health priority? Does the CHC hub and its affiliated faculty and partners have the expertise to help address the health priority? |
| Target Population: who the intervention or study is aimed at helping or learning more about |
Clearly define, in terms of the sociocultural contexts in which they live, work and play. |
What is an adequate sample for the project? How will participants be identified, recruited, engaged and retained across the project? What modes of outreach have proven to be successful with this population? Does the CHC hub and its affiliated faculty and partners have the expertise to help reach and engage this population? Who might we partner with to help us? |
| Project Outcomes & Outputs: (and related measures): e.g. physical, mental or social health outcomes; artistic outcomes; economic outcomes; outputs that are tangible products or capacities relevant for dissemination and future implementation |
Be guided by theoretical frameworks and driven by appropriate standards of evidence for investigative arena; to develop new tools that are sensitive to change, meaningful to constituents, and feasible in real-world settings. |
What valid and reliable measurement tools exist? Do new tools need to be developed? How many times do partners want to follow-up with participants? How important is measuring the costs of project, including qualitative approaches (Eisman et al., 2019)? Will both qualitative and quantitative assessment approaches be needed to capture outcomes? For example, quantitative tools that test an intervention’s impact on an outcome may imply causality and qualitative questions may garner critical feedback about causal mechanisms (i.e., the processes or pathways to reach that outcome) (Miles & Huberman, 2014). |
| Project Design: e.g. descriptive, case study, experiment), varying according to level of comprehensiveness or complexity (e.g., RCTs, feasibility and acceptability studies, pilot studies) |
Determine optimal design to address health priority for target population given attributes of partners and desired outcomes/outputs |
Is the project focused on individuals, families, organizations/systems, communities, or policies or more than one of these levels? What theories exist to guide project design? What evidence-based approaches are available to be applied or adapted? What modes of delivery make the most sense? What fidelity practices are needed (e.g., monitoring of delivery, receipt and enactment of the intervention; Burgio et al., 2001). What can help improve the project’s availability, accessibility, and acceptability (e.g., cultural responsiveness)? |
| Analyses & Findings: driven by project design, outcomes, and outputs involving qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. |
Examine key outcomes beyond statistical or clinical significance to incorporate other types of significance (Schulz et al., 2002) including quality of life indicators, social validity, and social significance. |
What amount of change in outcomes constitutes evidence? What findings from formative evaluation processes and lessons learned are relevant to stakeholders and how should they be shared? |
| Dissemination & Implementation: (of the interventions themselves) |
Examine the factors and processes that lead to the widespread use of the interventions by target populations (dissemination) and successful integration of them in particular settings (implementation). |
Key questions emerge with regard to outputs associated with the project and how and when to share those (treatment manuals and training programs, “how to” webinars, screening and assessment tools). Who participates? Where is the project delivered and how consistently is it delivered? Who delivers and how are they trained? Is it adapted and how? What environment and community supports exist to sustain the project? To what extent is the project is institutionalized? |