Guide Outline
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Phase 1
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Guide Outline
Phase 3: Implement & Grow
A
Maintain momentum to:
- Keep current partners engaged and engage new partners.
- See the impact of your work!
- Build on or scale up successful activities.
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B
Track and evaluate progress to:
- Maintain partner accountability
- Monitor for current and future funding needs
- Identify problems early enough to fix them
- Show your successes
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C
Expand or evolve to:
- Keep strategies and priorities consistent with changing scientific understanding.
- Restructure when new partner or convener opportunities arise.
- Optimize your energy or resources
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Explore Helpful Resources to supplement your work.
- Worksheets
- Practical Tips
- Troubleshooting
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Phase 3 - Step A
Maintaining Momentum
Once your initiate is underway, it will take continued care and feeding to stay on track and keep partners engaged.
Strategies to stay on track
- Schedule regular check-ins organized by priority area workgroups. Regular check-ins ensure that barriers are addressed quickly by reallocating resources or adjusting the timeline if needed.
- Create a short summary of your action plan to share with partners, volunteers, and others you want to engage.Remind partners of the overarching goal frequently.
- Make the status of activities available to all collaborators to ensure accountability.
- Celebrate successes along the way, even small successes.
Phase 3 - Step B
Track and Evaluate Progress
Tracking your progress towards your goals helps to maintain accountability, monitor for current and future funding needs, and identify problems early enough to fix them. Add content stressing the importance of good data to establish your baseline. Evaluating your progress will also provide evidence of your successes and help secure more engagement, funding, and other support. Pay attention to both outcome evaluation – which applies to your priority goals – and process evaluation – which shows how well the initiative is working. Both are important to track and evaluate.
Outcome Evaluation
Goal | Where We Were | Where We Are Now* |
---|---|---|
Example: Increase lung cancer screening in eligible population. | Lung cancer screening in eligible population was 10%. | 2 years into project: Lung cancer screening in eligible population is 12% 5 years into project: Lung cancer screening in eligible population is 20%. |
Example: Increase the percentage of people who currently smoke who contact the state Quitline. | People who smoke who contacted the state Quitline annually was 45%. | People who smoke who contacted the state Quitline is 60% |
Example: Increase the percentage of patients diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer who receive biomarker testing at five community hospitals. | (Baseline could be the average across all five sites or by individual site.) Biomarker testing rates for this target population was 20% across the five sites. | Biomarker testing rates for this target population increased by at least 10% at each of the five sites. |
Example: Decrease the percentage of patients with advanced lung cancer who stop treatment due to cost. | 50% of patients with advanced lung cancer who expressed financial distress were successfully connected to appropriate financial assistance. | 80% of patients with advanced lung cancer who expressed financial distress were successfully connected to appropriate financial assistance. |
* Track at a variety of timepoints to make sure you are staying on course. Funders may want to see an annual report, but quarterly reviews can help you see early success or where there are problems that need to be addressed.
Process Evaluation
What to Evaluate | How to Evaluate It |
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Evaluate how the coalition is functioning |
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Evaluate resource sustainability |
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Evaluate representation |
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Phase 3
Helpful Resources
Worksheets


Phase III Implement The Action Plan
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Phase III Track/Evaluate Progress and Impact
View MorePractical Tips
Step A
Maintain Momentum
“We put the overarching objective at the top of the agenda for every meeting for our coalition. Repeating the overarching goal frequently is a way to remind everyone that this is why we are here.”
“Write up an action plan summary one-pager to provide in place of a bigger action plan. People will be more likely to remember them.
“Celebrate the easy goals. When people see even the small accomplishments, it motivates them.”
Step B
Track and Evaluate Progress
Find evaluation teams outside of the initiative staff. Provides objectivity, they can push and also stand back and evaluate rigorously.
Lean on specific members who have expertise in a certain area. For example, someone with this expertise can help create an evaluation framework.
Find out what measures the members of your coalition are tracking separately and pull them in to track collectively.
Identify university partners who can help.
Step C
Expand or Evolve
“Don’t just follow the money. If you take funding tied to a specific activity or priority that doesn’t fit the goals of stakeholders or isn’t in line with what would be impactful, you can spend a lot of time and effort for something that can derail your whole effort.”
“A good way to assess if it’s time to expand your efforts is by listening to your members. Are they showing engagement? If they are, it may be a good sign that you can grow. If they aren’t engaged, now might not be the right time to take on more.”
Troubleshooting
Revisit partner priorities and make sure you are helping them achieve these priorities
Make sure meetings are efficient and action-oriented
Conduct ongoing communication
Remind partners and activity leaders of the overall goal and make sure you have made an effective case for the action plan to be the best way to meet the goal.
If you don’t have dedicated staff or volunteers focused on program management, make that happen.
Ask “what can we do”?” Plan so that when the barrier is gone, you can move forward. Don’t change your goal but look for other wins so the barrier doesn’t stall your efforts.
If someone is coming into leadership, get them up to speed quickly and effectively by connecting them purposefully with the group.
Make sure the people with institutional memory help with comprehensive onboarding.
Assess where you are in the action plan and prioritize activities that already have momentum.
Helpful Links
Evaluation Documents, Workbooks and Tools
Developing an Effective Evaluation Plan, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/downloads/cdc-evaluation-workbook-508.pdf