Alissa Marchant

Director

Innovation Network

Shelli Golson-Mickens

Senior Associate

Innovation Network

How to Embed Equity in Your Data Communications

Evaluators hold substantive power and we influence decisions with the way we communicate our data findings. To ensure that our findings support community needs, reduce harm, and reflect the diversity of those communities, evaluators must carefully consider how our audience receives written words and visual presentations of data. 

Innovation Network’s Alissa Marchant and Shelli Golson-Mickens will discuss what it takes to communicate equitably. They will share principles for communicating equitably from our Equitable Communications Guide and concrete strategies for applying them to your work.

Deja Taylor

Senior Managing Strategist - Midwest Partnerships

UBUNTU Research & Evaluation

Koren Dennison

Managing Evaluation & Communications Strategist

UBUNTU Research & Evaluation

Asset Mapping for Community Building: An Alternative Dignity-Based Approach to Needs Assessment

This case study presentation will look at a resident-led participatory asset mapping initiative on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side. Facilitators will share insights and outcomes from a 14-month participatory project focused on uncovering community strengths, resources, and priorities to enhance neighborhood safety. This session will highlight the innovative Afrofuturist Evaluation (AFE) methodology used to center Black residents’ voices, experiences, and cultural perspectives throughout the mapping process.

Participants will learn techniques for gathering qualitative, community-driven data on existing assets while revealing gaps needing investment. For instance, approaches like interviews with long-term “Knowledge Keepers” with Black elders as well as amplifying youth voice through "Neighborhood Navigators" and beta-testing with community members to co-develop a digital archive will be covered as participatory practices.

Megan López

Senior Research Associate

Western Michigan University

Advancing Evaluation Capacity Building: Key Insights from Researchers and Practitioners

Over the past two decades, there has been a significant rise in interest in Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB) practice and scholarship. As our commitment to practicing and researching ECB deepens, so too must our understanding of how to effectively evaluate the impact and effectiveness of these efforts. Responding to Bourgeois and colleagues' (2023) call to leverage evaluation for a deeper understanding of meaningful ECB, a forthcoming issue of New Directions for Evaluation, guest edited by Lyssa Wilson Becho and Megan López, brings together practitioners and scholars to explore and share insights on evaluating ECB. This issue features contributions that examine research, theory, methodological approaches, and practical applications in the field. This presentation will highlight the key themes and practical lessons from this collaborative effort, offering valuable guidance for those involved in planning, implementing, or researching ECB. By sharing our findings from this issue, we hope to kickstart conversations and foster ongoing dialogues around the evaluation of ECB and meaningful ECB practices that lead to future innovations and improvements.

Sarah Mason

Director, Center for Research Evaluation

University of Mississippi

Err....you're an evaluator? Research on explaining evaluators to non-evaluators 

To advance our field, people need to know what evaluation is and why it is of value. However, many evaluators know that it can be difficult to explain what we do to those unfamiliar with evaluation. This presentation explores a series of research studies exploring (a) the general public's understanding of evaluation, and (2) strategies for explaining evaluation to non-evaluators. Sarah will share findings from experiments on how to enhance understanding of evaluation and reflections on building the profile of our profession. 

Corey Smith, Ph.D.

Director, Health Equity Evaluation

Corewell Health

Nathan Browning MA

Founder and Principal

Kaier Research

Evaluating Health Equity within Healthcare

How do you evaluate a whole strategy? This is the question our health equity evaluation team at Corewell Health has been wrestling for the past 4 years. As an evaluation team we are uniquely situated to play a critical role in helping to provide strategic insights, generate meaningful evidence of value, and support health equity efforts at Corewell as it continues to mature. Corewell Health the largest healthcare system in Michigan with over 65,000 employees, 21 hospitals, and over 300 outpatient sites.  In this presentation we will discuss the journey we’ve gone on to answer that critical question of how to evaluate a strategy. Grounded in a commitment to advancing systems-change and with a mission to support strategic decision making we have navigated changes in organizational structure, built up the case for evaluation as a practice, and attempted to operationalize the notion of co-learning (as described by Schwandt & Gates, 2021) as the work continues to eliminate health disparities for our patients and communities. This presentation will include a discussion of how we are situated in the organization and the implications for evaluation, how we are working to move from a program to a portfolio driven approach to evaluation as a way to evaluate strategy, and the opportunities that co-learning has provided us to support our teams mission.