Methods: The iterative process for developing this measure involved incorporating valuable feedback from community partners and researchers through several rounds of element sorting and qualitative interviews. Creating healthy and sustainable communities is hard work – community well-being is complex (see our “Seven Vital Conditions for Well-being” framework), and promoting well-being requires collaborative, cross-sectoral work and collective impact. In recent years, networked approaches to community health have multiplied. As a result, those working in the field often face the challenge of measuring the overall impact of the work done by multiple community partners across sectors, taking into account different health needs. Results: The resulting action, Evaluation of Community-Based Research Partnerships (PAIR), has 32 elements and 5 dimensions: communication, collaboration, partnership values, benefits and evaluation. The innovative process of using CPM in policy development, the benefits of this approach and the lessons learned are highlighted. Background: While partnership between academic researchers and community members is critical to community-based research efforts, there are limited measures to evaluate this concept. The existing evaluation criteria do not comprehensively cover the many dimensions of partnerships. In addition, these actions were not designed using a comprehensive community-based participatory research (CBR) model that integrates the strengths of traditional evaluation techniques with stakeholder input. Objectives: The purpose of this article was to describe the creation of a measure to assess key dimensions of partnerships between researchers and community members using a CPR approach to measure development.

By allowing a partnership to think and act beyond the capabilities of its individual participants, cooperation through synergy is worthwhile. Any working partnership within the district can use this tool or survey as a measure of success. A partnership should use the tool or survey if it: How was the Partnership Self-Assessment Tool or Survey developed? A successful collaborative process allows a group of stakeholders primarily from Hickman Mills C-1 to combine their complementary knowledge, skills and resources so that they can accomplish more together than alone. We call this unique combination “partnership synergy”. The synergy that a partnership achieves through a successful collaborative process is not just an exchange of resources between participants. Together, participants create something new and valuable – a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. When a collaborative process achieves a high level of synergy, the partnership is able to think in new and better ways about how to achieve its goals. more comprehensive and integrated interventions; and strengthen their relationships with the wider community.

2. Create a flexible framework that allows partners to pursue unique actions that their work is likely to address. While it`s important to agree on a framework in advance, that doesn`t mean there can`t be differences in what each partner is pursuing. There should be consistent measurement variables across partners, but not all variables are measured by all. For example, a municipality working to improve the juvenile justice system might have one partner who tracks student contact points with school resource workers, while another could track juvenile conviction data. 3. Facilitate partner input through your measurement tool/process. If it`s not easy for partners to enter their contact information, they probably won`t. Consistent and timely data download should be part of the agreed measurement system and be intuitive and easy for partners. Conclusions: The PAIR program was developed based on a need identified jointly by community members and researchers, and aims to characterize the range of relationships between researchers and community members engaged in community-based research and programs.

Why is the partnership instrument/survey needed? Partnerships are very valuable because the collaborative process brings together different types of people and organizations and allows them to accomplish much more than they can do alone. However, the success of a collaborative process is easier said than done, especially when a partnership involves participants from a wide range of backgrounds, such as professionals, service providers and community residents who are directly affected by the issues. Because of the enormous challenges involved, many partnerships struggle to maximize their potential for collaboration. Want to talk about our simple and effective approach to impact measurement? Contact us. 1. Develop and agree on a measurement framework in advance. Before the work even begins (or as soon as possible), create a set of common actions and goals that you want to pursue. If each community partner defines success differently, the data collected will likely not be easy to aggregate to see the combined impact. Creating a simple list of indicators that each partner will track and how the indicators work together to address health needs can be a game changer. This reliable, easy-to-use web-based tool offers partnerships an exciting new way to assess the performance of their collaborative process and identify specific areas to focus on to make the process work well.

The tool is provided to partnerships as a tool for partnerships in Hickman Mills School District C-1. We describe below: why this tool/survey is needed, how the tool/survey was developed, who should use the tool/survey, how the tool/survey works, how partnerships can use the tool/survey to evaluate their partnerships with the district at the end of each year of its existence. In addition to judging whether or not they are achieving their end goals, most partnerships do not have a reliable way to determine how well their collaborative process is working or what they can do to improve it. The Partnership Self-Assessment Tool/Survey is designed to meet these needs. It helps partnerships: understand how collaboration works and what it means to create a successful collaborative process, assess how well the collaborative process is working, identify specific areas they can focus on to improve the collaborative process. There is no silver bullet for an aggregate evaluation, but through our work with community contributors, we have found that there are important elements to consider when implementing an effective measurement system. This can make a big difference: too many funders require recipients to enter a lot of data into a “black box” system, with no value to the recipients themselves. Create something that is useful to everyone – it should be easy to use (clean interface), and data reports should be digestible and visible to all partners to see how the work is going and how they can customize the programming to improve results.

Embedding timely results reports into a partner network not only serves as motivation to upload data consistently, but also provides shareable content and results to engage local stakeholders.