Best Babies Zone Evaluation
Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Oakland
*(While at Harder + Company Community Research)




Description
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.
Client: UC Berkeley School of Public Health
Timeframe: 2013 - 2016
Highlights
-
Worked with BBZ leadership team and BBZ sites to develop the evaluation
framework, initiative-level logic model and outcomes -
Developed initiative-level data dashboard
-
Conducted key leader interviews
-
Developed and conducted community survey
-
Developed site-level data tracker
-
Wrote comprehensive evaluation report with findings from first three years
-
Presented findings at APHA