Assessment Planning and Evaluation Lab (APEL)

The COPH APEL team consists of practitioners and researchers with expertise in health assessment, program planning and evaluation, community-based participatory research, research design, qualitative and quantitative methods, and reporting and dissemination through both scientific and non-scientific venues.

What We Do

The APEL team commits to assisting communities and organizations in planning and achieving their programmatic goals and contributing to the health and social well-being of communities throughout New Mexico.

We provide expertise to develop sound interventions and conduct community assessment and program evaluation projects that rely on participatory research, integrate community perspectives and inform practical programmatic decisions. 

Expertise

• Developing multilevel, socioecological perspectives that consider historical, cultural, and other contextual factors.
• Implementing participatory, context-specific approaches, methodologies and tools that build organizational capacity and ensure data quality.
• Integrating logic and planning models and theoretical frameworks that provide sound structure to interventions and facilitate evaluation.
• Identifying primary and secondary data sources and reliable indicators at the process, impact, and outcome levels.
• Adhering to ethical standards that ensure professional and research integrity and protect the rights of participants and stakeholders.
• Producing high quality reports that include specific recommendations for stakeholders.
• Developing scientific manuscripts suitable for peer-reviewed publications.

Training and Mentorship

Aligning academic goals with practice, students have the opportunity to work collaboratively with faculty on public health research and evaluation projects.  Research assistantships offer opportunities to develop qualitative and quantitative knowledge and technical skills including trained on commonly used data collection tools such as RedCap.