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Question: My position is grant funded and my job description was created with lofty ideals. It has been very challenging working in an unorganized and chaotic work environment. I work with a very diverse refugee population and it has been very challenging finding culturally appropriate health education materials. I was hoping by reaching out to my fellow colleagues in public health practice in order to find some helpful resources. My current position requires that I develop tools for program evaluation and needs assessment for my health education program. I have many questions so please accept my apologies in advance! How do I choose good health indicators? How do I measure health outcomes? For program evaluation for a refugee health program, how I measure behavior change? Especially in when different cultures interpret things differently. What tools (i.e., logic models, surveys, questionnaires, etc.) are available on the topic of refugee health? Are there videos available in different languages (e.g., Arabic, Karen, Burmese, Spanish, Nepali, Hindi, etc.) on health ed topics? How do I develop pre-/post-tests for low literate or illiterate refugees? What books or website would you recommend? Also, how do I rectify deterioating community partnerships? These task are beyond my scope of training, but I am very interested in learning how to do so...I just need additional training and guidance. Your time and patience is greatly appreciated. I look forward your reply. Thank you again for your assistance.
Answer: The questions you pose here require more detail explanation and perhaps training/profesional development. Any overview response that we would give you would not adequately meet your needs. Therefore, we recommend that you start with reviewing all the tools available in the community tool box. I think you will find many that may be of some assistance and meet your immediate needs. For the longer term, however, we suggest that you connect with an evaluation expert in your area. This could possbily be someone from a local agency or university. This person could then help you narrow your focus so that you can appropriately define program outcomes and develop an evaluation plan. Best of luck. NOTE: Because of a glitch, the response to your question did not get published. We publish it now with our apology for the delay.
Question Date: Wed, 10/14/2009