I wanted to make you aware of some resources here at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. I know that many in environmental health would like to develop their skills in evaluating the effectiveness of their public health practices so that, on a routine basis, they can increasingly inform more effective programs for the future.
This was the impetus for our Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health, which was the result of 2 years of consultation with stakeholders, programs, and evaluation practitioners. We wanted to design a general approach to evaluation that would ensure that the right evaluation questions were being asked and that the resultant findings would be put to use for program improvement. Our 6 steps and 4 standards offer a practical and systematic thought process that anyone can go through, whether in public health or other areas, and whether a large enterprise or a small intervention. Go to our main website www.cdc.gov/eval to find links to the framework itself.
We also have a more user-friendly self-study manual based on the framework at http://www.cdc.gov/eval/guide/index.htm. Other links at the site include many resources of use to those doing practical and applied evaluation. For more information or to answer questions, please feel free to contact me at TChapel@cdc.gov.
Tom Chapel, Chief Evaluation Officer, CDC
UK Environmental Health Research Network 