Published on February 6, 2013 at 10:57 PM
Researchers also tracked and evaluated the number of people reached by community interventions with the strength of those interventions. They found that the more people reached and the stronger the impact on each person reached, the more likely there was to be an observable difference in behavior at the population level.
Population dose provides a standard for comparing diverse community health projects and a way to measure interventions in aggregate. An article about the population dose findings was recently published in the American Journal of Evaluation.
"Community change is hard to do and even harder to measure," explains Allen Cheadle, director of the Center for Community Health and Evaluation. "Our thinking around dose can enable public health leaders to better capture the impact that community health initiatives are having on community environments and individual behaviors."
Kaiser Permanente's Community Health Initiatives aim to increase healthy eating and active living in communities with Kaiser Permanente facilities. Active in over 40 communities, including 13 in California and 25 in Colorado, the program focuses on environmental and policy change, including work in neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and the health sector.
With school-based health interventions showing promising results in improving community health, Kaiser Permanente is making plans to expand its school health efforts in the coming months..
Source: Kaiser Permanente