Moving From Stakeholder Engagement To Ownership And Accountability   06/28/2010

Public health is, by its very nature, community-driven. Even the best media campaigns and evidence-based practices will fail in the absence of community stakeholder support. We have learned and embraced the importance of engaging stakeholders and partners in our work. Despite this knowledge, we sometimes fall short of making the most of those key partnerships. Whether you are trying to move from "warm bodies at the table" and verbal commitments of support to meaningful engagement and agreement or even meaningful engagement to action and accountability, this session will help you assess the effectiveness of your coalitions and committees and develop a plan to move forward. This session is presented by Kim McCoy, BA, MS, MPH, a Community Health Planner at the Minnesota Department of Health. more...

Help make the IPLAN Data System better -- take one hour of your time to test a new version   06/03/2010

Would you like to be a part of creating Illinois' next system for searching, presenting and analyzing community health data on the web? This new system will ultimately replace the current IPLAN Data System, but will include more data, the ability to define more specific queries, and generate graphical results.

We are looking for interested volunteers from local health departments and community-based health organizations in Illinois to review our beta (test) version of our new web-based data query system. The test takes one to two hours to test and write up, can be done from your office, and will be extremely helpful to the design of the system. If you are interested, please Contact Us.

Adapting Evidence-Based Programs to Meet Local Needs   05/10/2010

As we strive to meet program outcomes as efficiently and effectively as possible, we turn to evidence-based models and programs. While the recipe, or the evidence-based model, may have proven results in one community-how do we know we can produce the same results in our local community? How do we identify the essential ingredients when we are trying to adapt a model to suit local cultural needs?" In this workshop, presenters will define "evidence-based" and differentiate the commonly interchanged terminology associated with evidence-based. Presenters will also share resources on where to find and how to select evidence-based programs and strategies for various population-based public health issues. In addition, program fidelity and identifying and addressing cultural needs will be explored in order to understand how to balance both. Finally, presenters will share how important process data can be to ensure the program is on track for producing intended outcomes. more...