[ Music ]
>> Welcome back to our video series
on evaluating health adaptation for a changing climate.
In this video we use our real world scenarios
to illustrate evaluation best practices for engaging stakeholders.
Stakeholder engagement is the first step in the CDC evaluation framework and continues
through the entire evaluation process.
When planning an evaluation we first identify who our stakeholders are
and understand what they hope to learn from the evaluation.
This will ensure that our findings our useful for them.
However, engaging stakeholders for evaluating health adaptation is complicated
by many factors.
Stakeholders may change over time, especially if any adaptation has a long time horizon.
It is often difficult to bring stakeholders together across sectors or scales.
Additionally, complex adaptations can involve stakeholders with different
or competing priorities, and some stakeholders may not always recognize
or prioritize the health implications of their work.
Overcoming challenges to stakeholder engagement while keeping health a priority requires a
commitment to three primary practices.
Engage early, engage often, and embrace differences.
Engaging stakeholders early encompasses determining who to involve, when and how.
This helps us anticipate time commitments, build relationships, clarify roles
and responsibilities, and generate support for the evaluation.
In this way we can understand our stakeholders better and help them understand the connection
between their adaptation actions and health.
Communicating often and regularly with stakeholders builds buy-in and helps
to sustain momentum throughout the evaluation.
This is particularly critical for the changing or seasonal nature of health adaptations.
Climatic events often occur in complex or unexpected ways, and rarely correspond
with the work routines across the various sectors.
Frequent engagement, even if it is just a quick email or phone call, keeps people involved
in the evaluation, while respecting their time and work context.
Evaluators embrace different interests or prospectives as an opportunity
to develop a more meaningful robust evaluation.
What may initially arise as a disagreement
between stakeholders may be an unseen opportunity
to more deeply understand the complexities of a health adaptation.
Use assessment tools and resources, such as those accompanying these videos
to help find commonalities among stakeholders and identify areas of mutual interests.
Let's now check in with our practitioners
to see how they are using these practices to engage their stakeholders.
If you would like to revisit our practitioner's evaluation journey so far,
please refer back to the previous videos in this series.
Cassandra, our program manager, is evaluating the effectiveness of rain gardens
on the storm mortar management, and it's associated health impacts.
She is engaging her stakeholders early by joining the first of several meetings
with various officials to learn about the selected sites for the rain gardens.
Since some officials have not considered health or evaluation in their initial project plans,
Cassandra's presence at this meeting may be seen as optional.
However, Cassandra thinks these early discussions may include key details
about how the project could eventually impact health.
As she listens, Cassandra takes notes on who is at the meeting and the issues they bring up.
She will use this information to ensure everyone's interests
and priorities are reflected in the evaluation plan and its implementation.
Meanwhile Elaine, our state epidemiologist,
working on wildfire preparedness encounters competing interests for her evaluation.
State leadership has required that her program show improved health outcomes
in two years' time.
However, Elaine is concerned that this is not enough time to work with the counties
to measure health outcomes, implement program improvements
to affect health, and meet state expectations.
Additionally, Elaine has received pushback from her counties on her plans
to perform a systematic evaluation, as they have only limited qualitative data
and limited evaluation capacity.
In light of her stakeholders concerns,
Elaine proposes that counties use their qualitative data
to create case studies or success stories.
Creating these will serve as a way to identify areas of improvement
and build evaluation capacity, satisfying the needs
and concerns of both her stakeholder groups.
In another part of the country Jackson is planning his evaluation
of a home health aide training to protect elderly from heat.
He begins his stakeholder engagement with his existing work group
of clinicians and nonprofit partners.
Through their initial discussions they realize their health adaptation involves stakeholders
that are not yet at the table.
Medicare and Medicaid representatives, home health aides, housing directors,
and additional community groups also have a stake in this adaptation.
The work group agrees to invite them to future meetings.
Further, Jackson anticipates that the timeline will be complicated.
Currently his work group only meets quarterly.
However, given the seasonality of extreme heat, they are missing key opportunities
for both program and evaluation planning.
Jackson and his work group decide to adjust their meeting schedule
to better align with the heat season.
As our practitioners demonstrate, engaging early and often and embracing differences is key
for stakeholder engagement in climate and health adaptation.
Following these practices not only sets the tone for a more useful evaluation,
but also establishes a model for continued stakeholder engagement throughout the
evaluation process.
CDC provides many useful resources on engaging stakeholders.
For more information please visit our climate and health evaluation web page.
In the following video our three practitioners will begin step two of the evaluation cycle,
describing their health adaptation work.
[ Music ]