The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded this study with the Health Outcomes Demonstration Project, a demonstration that provided 20 housing and community development organizations (HCDOs) support to develop and implement an evaluation plan for a program focusing on health outcomes. The grantees completed two rounds of data collection using select items from the suite of Success Measures Health Tools. The suite included 65 data collection instruments developed to measure health outcomes in ways that are more accessible in terms of language and format.
Community Science assessed the reliability of the Success Measures Health Tools and their usability by organizations new to measuring health outcomes. We explored the instruments’ ability to produce reliable data with minimal missing values across each of the HCDO sites. Using a mixed-methods analysis approach, we completed quantitative data analysis to examine the reliability and quality of data produced by the tools and conducted interviews, focus groups, and document reviews. We also examined the grantees’ use of and experience with the Success Measures Health Tools. This included which instruments grantees found most useful, most complex, and what changes might improve the use of the tools for future HCDOs.
Our findings suggested that the majority of the tools in our sample were reliable and provided good quality data across the grantee sites. We also found that grantees valued the availability of the Success Measures Health Tools. The instruments and accompanying technical assistance increased their understanding of the social determinants of health and how to measure health outcomes. In most cases, grantees reported that the tools were a good starting point for these concepts and were planning to continue measuring the health of their populations. Overall, the project gave grantees an opportunity to explore health outcomes by adding measured value to the already important services the HCDOs provided in their communities. 00529