Funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, BBZ uses a collective
impact approach to reduce health disparities and create an environment in which
every baby is born healthy and grows up thriving. Three cities were selected
to develop prototype BBZ communities across the United States: Cincinnati,
New Orleans, and Oakland. Kym Dorman (while at Harder + Company) led the
development of the evaluation framework and conducted the evaluation for
the national place-based Best Babies Zone Initiative (BBZ) during its first years.
Using a participatory and developmental evaluation approach, the team worked
with the UC Berkeley based BBZ leadership team, policy leaders from across
the country, and stakeholders from each site to develop evaluation tools and
systems for a process and outcome evaluation. Evaluation components included
an overarching BBZ logic model and corresponding set of outcomes, an initiative-level data dashboard, key leader interviews, a tailored community survey for site- level outcome data collection, as well as a site-level data tracker. The team also
produced a comprehensive evaluation report summarizing findings from the first
three years, and presented findings at the American Public Health Association.