University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center

HERO: About Us

The UNM Health Evaluation and Research Office (HERO) strives to enhance organizational capacity of integrate useful assessment, research and evaluative processes into on-going public health efforts. Staff work with a wide-ranging clientele in a participatory and collaborative process. The multidisciplinary staff at HERO include those with expertise in research design and methods (qualitative and quantitative), epidemiology, statistics, strategic planning, health communication, evaluation, educational psychology, social marketing and social/behavioral sciences. Staff also have many years’ “hands-on” experience implementing evaluation, research and interventions with community, state and national partners in real life settings and situations.

In particular, we:

• Work with schools, community organizations, universities, state agencies, foundations and Federal entities to develop comprehensive, strategic planning and evaluation services for public health programs,
• Collaborate with institutions to design and conduct user-focused, formative (exploratory) and intervention research on public health, health services and education topics,
• Provide technical assistance and training to partner agencies to build staff ability to incorporate feasible and effective research, evaluation and dissemination techniques and processes into their overall programming,
• Continue to improve, with others, the quality and innovativeness of research and evaluation methodologies

Among the core services HERO offers:

• Strategic planning and logic model development
• Program planning, monitoring and evaluation
• Research design and implementation (qualitative, quantitative, ethnographic)
• Process and outcome evaluation
• Design, testing and validation of research instruments (quantitative and qualitative),
• Social marketing/health communication design and evaluation,
• Screening and needs/resource assessment,
• Data analysis, reporting and dissemination, and
• Training and technical assistance (evaluation, research methods, communication, etc)

Some key partners and clients have included:

• The Navajo Nation (The Navajo Nation Evaluation Project to Reduce Agricultural Injury)
• National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (Sharing Wisdom Project)
• W.K. Kellogg Foundation/UNM New Mexico Community Voices Project (CVNM) (CVNM Evaluation)
• Flinn Foundation (Evaluating Community Initiatives to Reduce Teen Pregnancy Project)
• New Mexico Department of Health (School-based Health Centers Evaluation, Child Restraint Project, Bernallilo Public Schools Asthma Project)
• University of Hawaii/University of New Mexico (Telehealth Outreach for Unified Community Project)