CCHE experience


CCHE combines rigor with practicality, because we understand real-world community concerns

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We have broad expertise in evaluation methods and experience in a wide range of health issues

Our work spans qualitative research, community assessment, logic model development, case study research, and geographic and social network analysis—all focused on boosting the success of community health initiatives, philanthropic grantmaking programs, and clinical quality improvement. We excel in metric development for hard-to-measure outcomes like community impact, sustainability, and policy change.

Areas of focus and evaluation examples are described below.  Please contact any member of CCHE's leadership team for more information.


Areas of focus and evaluation examples

Clinic-community linkages

Health is about more than health care and there is increasing attention on linking patients to community resources to help them achieve health goals. CCHE has experience evaluating community health worker programs and other strategies designed to make those linkages.  

  • Learning to Integrate Neighborhoods and Clinical Care (LINCC)—a three-year project funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute to involve patients in designing their own care and develop a role in primary care clinics that connects patients to community resources—download a flyer about the LINCC project

Coalitions and partnerships for health improvement

CCHE has over 20 years’ experience evaluation the efforts of coalitions to improve community health. We have expertise in what makes a coalition work, and assess coalition functioning and effectiveness using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

  • Specialty Care Initiative (SCI)—a multi-year joint initiative of Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit and the California HealthCare Foundation that funded coalition-led projects to improve vulnerable populations' access to specialty care—learn more about results of the evaluation

Community-based obesity prevention

CCHE has evaluated a number of national multi-site policy and environmental change initiatives.  We take a mixed-methods approach to assessing impact, including documenting community changes and assessing population-level change.  We are pioneering "population dose" methodology to estimate the impact of obesity prevention strategies.

  • Kaiser Permanente's Community Health Initiative—a 10-year investment to improve the health of every resident living in 40 communities throughout the U.S.
  • Communities Putting Prevention to Work—$15.5 million CDC-funded obesity and tobacco prevention initiative in King County, Washington

Health care quality improvement

CCHE does mixed methods evaluations that explore both implementation and clinical outcomes of quality improvement initiatives, especially those at safety net clinics.  We provide technical assistance to help clinics identify, collect, and use data to drive their QI efforts.

  • The ALL HEART program developed by Kaiser Permanente identifies at-risk patients at community health centers and prescribes them Aspirin-Lisinopril-Lipid lowering medication plus support for lifestyle and behavior change

Healthy families

CCHE’s work evaluating programs and initiatives that target families of young children reflect our commitment to health improvement across the lifespan.  

  • The Vax Northwest Immunity Community program addresses parental concerns about vaccine safety—read more about our three-year evaluation, funded by the Group Health Foundation
  • Thrive by Five Washington—the Home Visiting program families matches families with trained professionals to support children’s healthy development, parenting, and early learning

Policy and systems change

Many of our evaluations focus on cross-sector policy and systems change strategies.  We use logic models to understand contributions to community changes and the policy spectrum to assess changes in the policy environment as well as tangible outcomes.

  • Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky Advocacy Initiative—five-year effort to advance health policy in Kentucky by engaging a committed army of advocates

Public health leadership and practice

With our deep background in public health, CCHE team members know the qualities of effective public health practice.  Our evaluations focus on the impact of leadership development programs on individuals, teams, and the communities served by public health departments.


What makes CCHE so effective is that they understand the DNA of our organization.

Gary Nelson, PhD, President, Healthcare Georgia Foundation

Our methods

CCHE's evaluations combine qualitative and quantitative methods

  • Case study research design and methods
  • Logic model and theory of change development 
  • Key informant interviews
  • Focus groups
  • Surveys
  • Observation and shadowing
  • Document and literature review
  • Analysis of secondary demographic and health status data
  • Geographic information systems (GIS) analysis and mapping
  • Quantitative analysis with SPSS and STATA
  • Social network analysis
  • Photovoice
  • Digital storytelling

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Evaluation and learning associate Juno Matthys interviews a key informant

Telling the data story

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Research associate Carly Levitz explains our mixed-methods approach to data

"Curious, data-hungry story weaver" Carly Levitz explains CCHE's mixed method approach to gathering data for assessing community health projects.Through qualitative data we can begin to understand how a community's environment influences what choices are available, while quantitative data and statistics can tell us if and how measures are changing over time. Read more in KPWHRI's Healthy Findings Blog.


Methods highlight

Photovoice

Photovoice is grassroots documentary photography where participants are given cameras and special training in taking photographs, reflecting on their meaning, and describing them with captions. The photos and captions are then displayed for public comment and discussion with policymakers.

Healthcare organizations can use Photovoice as an evaluation tool to capture the community’s viewpoint about gaps in resources and/or the effects of a program or initiative.

CCHE has experience in all phases of a Photovoice project. Read about how Photovoice is being used in Kaiser Permanente’s Community Health Initiatives.

Documenting community change with Photovoice
Santa Rosa, California 

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Reporting results

An example of a Slidedoc™ report that is easy to read on computers and mobile devices.


Contact CCHE

cche@kp.org 206-287-2035