Project Overview

Program Background

From January 2023 through December 2023 Dogwood Health Trust funded 12 organizations, located throughout Western North Carolina, to address chronic disease in their communities.

Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC) worked with the 12 Dogwood Health Trust funded organizations to increase readiness, skills, and organizational capacity to transition CHW programing from a telehealth and COVID 19 pandemic focus to a community-based chronic disease management program. 

The MAHEC team developed a technical assistance process that used an improvement approach tailored to each organization. They provided training and support directly to CHWs from the funded organizations that increased their skills and supported their growth through resource newsletters and regular trainings, on topics such as: chronic disease overviews, CHW roles and responsibilities, and motivational interviewing. MAHEC also provided organizational & leadership support through monthly one-on-one technical assistance (TA) sessions and discussion of CHWs roles and responsibilities within their organization, and facilitated connections between funded organizations to promote peer learning opportunities. MAHEC administered assessments of organizational readiness, skills, and capacity throughout the grant period and used results to design future TA  and training offerings. Additionally, MAHEC worked with partners to develop and collect reports to capture data and to ensure that clients received support services that met their needs. 

MAHEC partnered with the North Carolina Center for Health and Wellness (NCCHW) Culture of Results Initiative to complete an evaluation of the program from January 2023 through December 2023. Culture of Results (CoR) is an independent training and evaluation initiative that supports assessment, planning, evaluation and improvement processes of communities and programs across North Carolina. Additionally, the COR team partnered with UNC Asheville faculty and Asheville Buncombe Institute for Parity Achievement (ABIPA) to lead a team of Community Researchers (CRs) in supporting aspects of the data collection and analysis for this project.

Evaluation Methods

From January 2023 through December 2023 the Culture of Results Team, in partnership with MAHEC and the Community Research Team, conducted a program evaluation to better understand how the work of Community Health Workers imbedded in 12 Dogwood Health funded organizations is a unique and vital part of the WNC health care landscape.

A collaborative, mixed methods approach was used and consisted of the following steps:

•  Reestablishing the advisory group and community research team from the previous year’s evaluation and expanding to include a CHW as a full time member of the research team and a Master of Public Health practicum student;

• Working with MAHEC to update and improve their SmartSheet data collection tool to improve data validity;

• Collaboratively selecting and designing a multimedia data collection approach including video and audio recorded interviews with CHWs and their clients and Photovoice;

• Submitting to the UNCA Asheville IRB under an Exempt Review (approved);

• Consulting and training with the University of North Carolina Asheville Media Arts Lab to select and use recording equipment;

• Recruiting Spanish-speaking team members, utilizing transcription technologies and hiring professional translation services to better represent the lived experiences of the initiative's predominantly Spanish-speaking CHWs and their clients;

• Engaging 7 CHWs and 4 clients in onsite audio and video recorded interviews;

• Collaboratively reviewing and analyzing interviews with Community Research Team;

• Utilizing video editing software CapCut to produce and edit compelling thematic videos with input from partners from interview footage;

• Using initial findings,  to create and present a short video at the Imagining America 2023 National Gathering in October 2023;

• Presenting how this evaluation has utilized a Community-Based Participatory Research and Action Model at the 2023 American Public Health Annual Meeting in November 2023;

• Submitting a short video spotlighting one CHW and research team member to the My Hero International Film Festival;

• Creating a website to house all evaluation activities;

Participating CHW Organizations