Making a Difference

Here is a sampling of success stories that highlight how the Center for Research Strategies team works with a variety of clients to improve program success.

  • As the evaluator for the Denver Teen Pregnancy Prevention Partnership (DTPPP), a collaborative school-based pregnancy prevention intervention within three Denver Public Schools, CRS helped build a foundation that will enable DTPPP to demonstrate their impact for years to come. CRS assisted DTPPP in establishing a CiviCore database to track student participation and outcomes, revised their data collection tools to focus assessments on the critical outcomes while remaining culturally responsive and linguistically appropriate, and continues to work with DTPPP to enhance their evaluation process and outcomes. A summary of their successes can be found in the Executive Summary: Year Two Evaluation report that CRS prepared for DTPPP.
     
  • CRS has partnered with Little Voice Productions and other community agencies to produce three community outreach, public-health videos. These culturally competent videos were completed with input from community members and are designed to raise awareness in the community about Hepatitis C and HIV. HEP C: Inside and Out can be purcahased online, Prevention with Positives, Improving Care for People Living with HIV & Stay Safe: Living with HIV, Let's Start Talking can be purchased through CRS. The HIV and AIDS in the Latino Community video will be available for distribution shortly.
     
  • CRS is the Evaluation and Technical Assistance (TA) provider for the Colorado Child and Adolescent Violence Prevention Initiative of the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment which funds four youth mentoring and advocacy programs:  Big Brother-Big Sisters of Colorado, The Conflict Center, El Paso County Department of Health & Environment, and the San Luis Valley Community Mental Health Center Mi Animo Mentoring Program.  CRS assists the grantees with project logic model development, project evaluation, reporting for the Kansas University Community Toolbox and progress toward the State Bold Steps Toward Child and Adolescent Health:  A Plan for Youth Violence Prevention in Colorado.
     
  • CRS is working with Pueblo City Schools as the local evaluator for the district's  Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative.  CRS is ensuring that evaluation findings compiled over the course of this project help to ensure the sustainability of efforts to promote safe and healthy school environments for Pueblo's students.
     
  • CRS serves as the evaluator of the telenovela, Encrucijada: Sin salud no hay nada. This series of culturally competent 30-minute episodes informs the Spanish speaking community about services available to access health care in Colorado, mainly CHP+, and about prevention and management of chronic diseases.  CRS is following a group of viewers overtime and tracking contact and enrollment data to determine whether CHP+ enrollment and healthy or health-seeking behaviors change in relation to viewing the telenovela. Encrucijada: Sin salud no hay nada is a collaboration between The Colorado Health Foundation, The Colorado Foundation for Public Health & Environment, the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing, Child Health Plan PLUS, Entravision Communications Colorado, and Evolve Communications.
     
  • The Denver Public School District received a Teaching American History grant from the U.S. Department of Education to design and implement a new history curriculum in elementary, middle, and high schools to raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of American history.  CRS is assessing the extent to which teachers are learning new history content as well as new instructional strategies to teach their students to think critically.
     
  • The ONE Step program educates child care providers to talk to parents about the dangers of secondhand smoke and about preventing their children's exposure to secondhand smoke.  CRS examined the impact of the ONE Step program on child care providers' and parents' knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about children's secondhand smoke exposure. CRS' evaluation suggested that program participation affected providers and that the impact trickled down to parents. The One Step evaluation was conducted by CRS for the American Lung Association in Colorado with funding from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Enviorment (CDPHE) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
     
  • CRS is assisting the Downtown Aurora Visual Arts (DAVA) program in enchancing their evaluation activities.  This after-school program provides an arts-based job training program for middle school youth who are primarily from Hispanic or other ethnic minority families.  CRS is assisting DAVA by assessing the cultural competency of their instruments, collecting qualitative data about the youths' perceptions of their experience in the program and comparing school outcomes of DAVA participants to those of non-DAVA participants.
     
  • CRS partnered with the American Lung Association in Colorado, CREA Results, the Black United Fund of Colorado (BUFCO) and the Colorado Tobacco Education and Partnership Association (CTEPA), to evaluate the Healthy Neighborhoods Initiative (HNI), a three-year project funded by the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment. The project goal was to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke in Latino and African American communities in two neighborhoods of Central Denver. CRS helped focus the multiple intervention components and objectives of the project through the development of a logic model linking program goals and objectives to outcomes and by designing quantitative and qualitative evaluation tools to document outcomes. CRS' evaluation finding demonstrated increases in the residents' understanding of and willingness to reduce their exposure to secondhand smoke as well as increases in the numbers of residents deciding to quit smoking.
     
  • The American Lung Association in Colorado contracted with CRS to evaluate the Tailgate Outreach Project, a pilot educational intervention on secondhand smoke exposure that implemented in 2008.  Health promoters conducted educational presentations with groups of straight-to-work and Latino construction site workers on the dangers of secondhand smoke exposure and the benefits of smoking cessation.  CRS' tracking and assessment tools helped to demonstrate increases in knowledge about the health effects of tobacco and secondhand smoke exposure and a willingness to limit exposure to secondhand smoke exposure.
     
  • CRS worked with the Wellness Initiative to conduct an evaluation a yoga educational program that was implemented in several inner city Denver Public Elementary Schools.  After developing a logic model linking program activities to anticipated outcomes, CRS assisted the Wellness Initiative in developing measurement tools to assess changes in knowledge and skill levels among 3rd-5th grade students. CRS helped the Wellness Initiative demonstrate the effectiveness of their program as a viable education program to include within school physical educaiton programs.
     
  • The University of Colorado at Denver and Health Science Center contracted with CRS to evaluate a tobacco advocacy education curriculum developed by the Get R!EAL tobacco advocacy program entitled Bust Big Tobacco:  Middle School Media and Advocacy Education Program.  Results of the evaluation showed increased awareness and knowledge gain, as well as increased motivation to become involved in tobacco advocacy among groups of middle school aged youth throughout the state of Colorado who participated in the pilot evaluation project.
     
  • CRS was contracted by the Colorado Department of Education to develop a wellness policy assessment tool that was administered throughout Colorado during the 2006-07 school year.  The results demonstrated that over 80% of the subset of 36 Colorado school districts who were surveyed had satisfied the federal requirements, and 83% of them stated that plans were in place to measure implementation.  A similar percentage of districts in Colorado has now begun to implement wellness activities within their schools, and will continue to build upon their policies and implementation activities in upcoming years.
     
  • The State Tobacco Education and Prevention Partnership at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) received a contract from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to write a Tobacco Disparities Strategic Plan for the state to reduce disparities in the use of tobacco and the burden of disease in identified populations.  CRS facilitated the nine month, strategic planning process which involved over 30 representatives from disparate communities.  The process is being used as a model by the CDC for other states as they develop tobacco disparities strategic plans.
     
  • CRS evaluated the $10.2 million Health Professions Initiative sponsored by The Colorado Trust to increase the number of health professionals in Colorado across all disciplines, including primary, mental and dental health care, as well as pharmacy.  Through this Initiative, The Colorado Trust increased the number of health professionals in Colorado by increasing education, training and advancement opportunities for students, especially those who could provide health care services to rural and medically underserved communities. Details about the impact of this initiative can be found in the midterm and final evaluation reports prepared by CRS for The Colorado Trust.
     
  • Over the past five years, CRS has served as the evaluator for the Coordinated School Health Initiative, a CDC funded demonstration that entails a collaboration between the Colorado Department of Education and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.  Building on the learnings from the past five years, CRS is now helping to construct a state-level surveillance system that will enable schools to track their progress related to nutrition and physical activity which in turn will help Colorado in its fight against obesity. Two of the most referenced products CRS recently produced for the initiative are review of evidence-based School Health research and a Summary of Findings from the Colorado School Health Profiles Survey.
     
  • With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Paul Nutting is investigating optimal strategies for integrating quality improvements related to diabetes and depression care in primary care practice settings.  Using facilitators and site-based Improvement Teams, this project is seeking to enable primary care practices to institute ongoing improvement cycles for managing chronic care patients while improving practice effectiveness and efficiency.