2003 Campus-Community Partnerships

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Evaluation of LAEP's Community Family Health Care Initiative

Abstract:

This project entails a collaboration between UCLA's Center for the Study of Evaluation (CSE)/National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) and the Family Care Health Initiative of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership (LAEP), an organization that strives to increase educational opportunities for all students. The proposed project extends other current research and evaluation partnerships between CSE/CRESST and LAEP.

The goal of this collaboration is to design an indicator and assessment system that LAEP can use for on-going monitoring and improvement of its Family Care Health Initiative and the possible expansion of the Health Initiative to other communities. The Health Initiative is a health education program seeking to increase the capacity of families in the Pacoima community to act as informed and vocal consumers of community health and social services, improving both use and understanding of the health care system. The initiative's ultimate goal is to increase community knowledge of physical and mental health issues so that families make healthy, positive changes in daily living habits and overcome health and social barriers to learning. The proposed project's outcome, an indicator system, also will have use for other evaluation and research efforts beyond this collaboration.