Dr Jeffery Adams, SHORE & Whāriki Research Centre.
Massey University’s SHORE & Whāriki Research Centre has been successful in securing funding from the Ministry of Health to provide the National Public Health Evaluation Training Service.
The nationwide contract has been held by the centre in various forms since 2002. The training service, provided free to public health and community health sector groups nationwide, involves supporting the evaluation and delivery of training workshops, organisational evaluation capacity building, and evaluation advice and coaching service.
Dr Jeffery Adams, a senior research officer at the centre and part of the training team, says there are numerous challenges facing those working to improve the health of communities, and a desire for solutions to be well planned and evidence informed. “Our workshops give practitioners skills in planning appropriate programmes and also assist in determining how well they are working, or could be working better,” Dr Adams says.
“The overall aim of the service is to improve the quality of programme and evaluation planning, and to develop the skills and knowledge base of the public health workforce in programme evaluation so that more effective responses to public health issues and delivery of public health services can be achieved.”
Tailored evaluation support is available for organisations offering programmes with a public health focus, he says. “The purpose of this support is to assist organisations to engage in evaluative thinking and to develop skills to conduct an evaluation. We coach organisations through this process by helping them design an evaluation plan, which includes developing a logic model, evaluation questions, data collection methods, data synthesis methods and reporting. We also offer evaluation advice and support for individual public health workers.”
Other members of the team responsible for delivering the training programme are Dr En-Yi (Judy) Lin and Verne McManus. They are guided and supported by SHORE director Professor Sally Casswell and Whāriki director Professor Helen Moewaka Barnes of Te Kapotai, Ngapuhi-nui-tonu.
Find out more about the upcoming training opportunities here.