University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center

Projects: Health Evaluation & Research Office

CURRENT/ONGOING

Navajo Nation Evaluation Project

The overall goal of this intervention effectiveness evaluation is to engage community stakeholders in the planning, implementation, and assessment of a culturally appropriate model program to reduce and prevent agricultural-related injuries on the Navajo Nation. Using a science-based planning process, a pre-post evaluation design, and a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the evaluation will describe and then document links between process indicators, intermediate outcomes, and longer-term outcomes. The project model will increase the capacity of community-based organizations and community members to design and implement science-based interventions.

Los Pasos Project

The Los Pasos project focuses on children from birth to three years of age who have been exposed in utero to controlled substances. This is a case management intervention that aims to create a healthy family environment to maximize the child’s development. The evaluation of this project measures program outcomes and links services to outcomes, and provides feedback data to the program.

Sharing Wisdom Project

Funded by the National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases, the Sharing Wisdom project aims to reduce modifiable diabetes risk factors in Native American women and their families through culturally specific intervention. The Office of Evaluation is conducting process and outcomes evaluation of the intervention.

REACH Hidalgo

A coalition of agencies in New Mexico's southwestern Hidalgo and Luna counties have received a planning grant from the Centers for Disease Control to design an intervention aimed at reducing the impact of Diabetes among Hispanic residents. The Office of Evaluation is providing the following services: facilitation of the planning process; technical assistance in defining measurable and realistic objectives and in choosing appropriate intervention strategies; technical assistance in conducting a needs assessment involving the analysis of existing data and the collection of missing data; and design of a monitoring and evaluation plan.

Computerized Health Risk Assessment in an Employee Population (HRA)

The overall goal of the proposed research is to test the effectiveness of a theoretically-based interactive behavioral and health risk assessment system to improve the mental and physical health outcomes of the primary care provided for the adult multicultural members of a university health center-employee-based practice. The new system will include (1) administration of a computerized behavioral and health risk assessment, (2) calculation of an individualized risk profile for each patient participant, (3) individual patient computerized video training in interaction focused on the risk profile, (4) physician training in patient-provider interaction, motivational interviewing and counseling, and in referral and triage focused on the risk profile, and (5) development of a negotiated care plan between patient and clinician for follow-up care. Expected outcomes include changes in: risk category scores, utilization patterns, costs for health care services, and health stage of change indicators. Expected impacts (mediating variables) are: compliance with recommendations, health locus of control, differences in patient-provider interaction patterns and patient and clinician satisfaction. If successful, this methodology would contribute significantly to the health promotion goals of Healthy People 2010 and provide much needed evidence of how a behavioral and health risk assessment system can help to reduce ethnic health disparities of multi-cultural populations. This proposal is responsive to CDC’s RFA for Health Promotion in the Workplace; in particular it responds to requests for strategy #6: Identification and evaluation of public health informatics and communication strategies and tools to improve health decisions, health alerting, health literacy, or health assessment among employees and employers.

Assessing HPV Vaccine Acceptability among Adolescent Health Providers in New Mexico

Our study is intended to enhance understanding of the perceived barriers and facilitators to vaccination practice related to HPV among adolescent health providers. In this formative research, we will examine the range of factors that influence counseling and vaccination practices, as well as behaviors and psychosocial issues that potentially bear upon the acceptability of HPV among diverse groups of providers.

Pediatric Asthma Assessment System

The office is currently working with emergency medicine physicians to develop a questionnaire for use in emergency and acute care settings. The purpose of the questionnaire is to aid heath care providers in assessment of asthma’s impact on child and parents of children with asthma.

New Mexico Community Voices Project (NMCV)

Funded by the WK Kellogg foundation, NMCV aims to reduce disparities in health care through provision of direct health services and policy-level changes at the state level. The goal of this project is to evaluate the process and outcomes of the New Mexico Community Voices (NMCV) initiative. A logic model was developed with key stakeholders to guide the evaluation. The evaluation is multi-faceted and considers individual-, system-, and policy-level changes that have occurred and the impact on access to care, utilization and coverage for underserved populations in New Mexico.

New Mexico Math, Engineering, Science Achievement, Inc.

NM MESA, Inc. is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote educational enrichment for pre-college students from historically under-represented ethnic groups, and to prepare these students for careers in math, engineering and science. NM MESA consists of close to 100 school programs across the state. The goals of this evaluation were to (1) determine whether a non-profit program targeting under served students positively impacts student outcomes; (2) to work with an advisory group to create a program logic model; and (3) plan for future evaluation efforts. Activities included quantitative and qualitative analyses, review of database and program reports, convening of an evaluation stakeholder advisory group, and synthesis of advisory group recommendations.

COMPLETED PROJECTS

New Mexico Department of Health

Funded by the New Mexico State Department of Health in collaboration with the CDC and the New Mexico Department of Education, the program's goal is to guide the development of a model for evaluation of school health interventions, based on an established process of needs assessment, strategic planning, selection of process, impact and outcome indicators, development and pilot testing of instruments, support for management information systems, and development and implementation of a protocol for evaluation.

Evaluating Community Initiatives to Reduce Teenage Pregnancy

Funded by the Flinn Foundation, this project's goal is to seek to understand the factors that impede or facilitate the building of coalitions and the planning and implementation of coalition-sponsored programs to reduce teen pregnancy. The program is conducted in Arizona.

Office of School Health (OSH)

Developed Version 2 of SBHC Pro!, a computerized database for client, patient, and visit information at School-Based Health Centers. The Office of Evaluation co-authored a report with the Office of School Health describing DOH funded School-Based Health Centers in New Mexico and provided all data for this report.

The TOUCH Project

The TOUCH project (Telehealth Outreach for Unified Community Health) is a multi-year, collaborative effort between the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii and the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. The goal of the project is to demonstrate the feasibility of employing advanced computing methods to enhance education in a problem-based learning format in a medical school curriculum, applying a specific clinical case as a model, and deploying to remote learning sites.

DOH/Child Restraint Project

Office of Evaluation completed two studies used as the basis for strengthening the child and passenger restraint laws. These new laws were acted upon by the legislature and went into effect in June 2001.

Evaluation Course

The Office of Evaluation conducted an eight month evaluation course for 50 Department of Health staff to improve DOH use of evaluation methodologies.

The Research Ethics Project

This project is directed towards the development, refinement, and evaluation of an annual six-week course to train "Ethics in Research." It is envisioned that these trained preceptors will then function to enhance the existing UNM Health ethics consciousness through three major vehicles:

1. Dissemination of ethics information
2. Interactive-intervention
3. Outreach ethics programs.

Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute Diabetes Prevention Planning Grant

The goal of this study was to provide evaluation services for a one-year planning process for diabetes educators at a Native American tribal community college. The evaluation was part of a one-year Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) planning grant.  Activities include a student needs assessment questionnaire, focus group, and faculty needs assessment.

Department of Health / Bernalillo Public Schools Asthma Project

Funded by the New Mexico State Department of Health in collaboration with the CDC and the New Mexico Department of Education, the program's goal was to guide the development of a model for evaluation of school health interventions, based on an established process of needs assessment, strategic planning, selection of process, impact and outcome indicators, development and pilot testing of instruments, support for management information systems, and development and implementation of a protocol for evaluation. The work culminated with a comprehensive school-based asthma management intervention pilot-tested with school nurses in Bernalillo Public Schools during the 2002-2003 school year. The Office of Evaluation’s role was to work with stakeholders from DOH, school-based health centers and the local school site; design process and outcome data collection instruments; conduct surveys / interviews with district staff; and perform qualitative and quantitative data analysis.

Los Pasos Project

The Los Pasos project focused on children from birth to three years of age who had been exposed in utero to controlled substances. This was a case management intervention that aimed to create a healthy family environment to maximize the child’s development. The evaluation of this project measured program outcomes and links services to outcomes, and provides feedback data to the program.