Challenges Evaluating an Equity-Focused Community Coalition Initiative

Abstract

In this practice note, the authors reflect on their experiences evaluating a three-year behavioural health equity initiative that was conducted with eight community coalitions located across the southeastern United States. The main focus of the practice note is on the challenges the authors experienced in their evaluation, most of which were largely outside their control: unpredictable funding cycle, complexity of problem, level of local knowledge, level of data literacy, and collaborative approach not realized. While they acknowledge the complexity of behavioural health equity issues, they conclude with four key implications for practice that they note can help relieve the stress of some of the challenges they experienced.