An Evaluation of ARC Health Projects in Appalachia

Our team will develop and enhance the research methods to collect performance data on health projects and analyze the results. We will accomplish this by exploring relevant research projects recently conducted for ARC and other government health project. I. Our team will develop and implement a survey to obtain updated, accurate project performance data for ARC health projects. This program evaluation will examine roughly 230 health projects that were funded by ARC between 2004 and 2010. We will use this survey to collect performance data on health projects and analyze the results. This task will require development of a consistent set of performance measures for these projects, using information gathered from the preferred survey methods. The goal is to provide complete and accurate performance data for as many health projects as practicable, supplementing and enhancing the existing ARC.net data on health projects. II. We will analyze and summarize results gathered for all existing performance measures. Assess the utility and validity of these performance measures for monitoring and evaluating health projects. The focus of this task is on analyzing the collected data from the previous task, organized around direct project outputs (characteristics of the project and capacity) and outcomes (ultimate impacts in terms of patients served, improved health care awareness, community health indicators, etc.). We will collect information (where relevant) that relates to: Physical improvements (e.g., facilities, equipment): Capacity of the improvements in terms of square feet, patients that could be served, hospital beds/rooms, capacity of equipment/buildings, new technology capabilities, etc. For health education and research: tangible measures of program goals, successes, community participants, etc. The number of patients, workers, trainees, and/or participants served and improved following project closeout and for two to three years after project completion; the number of health and education professionals certified, trained, or improved by other professional development activities, and the expected benefits of these activities; the number of jobs created and retained through investments in health; the amount, relative contribution, and leveraging rates of ARC and other project-related funds and the resulting non-project private investment that resulted. III. We will prepare a database containing project information and key performance data that could be uploaded to a Web site to allow viewing by the public. We will provide metadata (field name description, definition, source, source date, and equation if computed) for all raw and computed data fields. IV. We will conduct at least 13 in-depth case studies of ARC health projects (at least one in each Appalachian state). Identify innovative or promising programs that are addressing critical health needs, and describe how barriers and challenges were overcome. We will look specifically to select locations in rural, economic distressed, underserved communities. The goal is to provide health stakeholders with performance measurement methods and tools to help assess the impact of health projects in the Appalachian Region. V. Finally we will discuss policy implications raised by the analysis and formulate appropriate recommendations.