Improving Prevention through Evaluation

The Chicago HIV Prevention Evaluation Demonstration Project, a three-year project developed and administered by the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, is an innovative initiative that created partnerships between community-based organizations and university-based researchers interested in evaluating HIV prevention programs.

After a year-long feasibility study that resulted in the establishment of "process evaluation" as the focus of the initiative, the project was officially launched in September 1997. The project has four principal objectives: (1) to increase the capacity of community-based agencies to design, implement and evaluate HIV prevention programs; (2) to identify and document successful and replicable strategies for preventing the spread of HIV; (3) to increase collaboration between university-based researchers and community providers in order to enhance the work of both; and (4) to disseminate project findings to other providers, researchers, funders, planners and policy makers.

AFC is currently funding third-year activities at three agencies -- Centro San Bonifacio, Chicago Women's AIDS Project, and Project VIDA, and for three researchers -- Dr. Chow S. Lam, director of the Center for Vocational and Psychological Services and a professor of rehabilitation psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology; Dr. Joyce A. Sween, a professor in the Departments of Sociology and Public Service at DePaul University; and Dr. Gary Harper, an assistant professor of psychology in the Department of Psychology at DePaul University.

The three agencies and their research partners have made significant progress on the project objectives listed above, including: (1) conducting the funded prevention intervention; (2) improving each agency's evaluation systems; (3) developing second-year evaluation plans; (4) developing protocols and procedures for data collection and processing; (5) implementing second-year evaluation plans; and (6) implementing programmatic improvements and determining year-three outcome evaluation activities.

In its role as project coordinator, AFC monitors partners' programmatic and fiscal progress and performance, convenes regular meetings among project partners, provides technical assistance to funded programs, assists in resolving problems that may arise within funded CBO/researcher partnerships, represents the project at conferences and other events, and shares project results with local prevention providers.

During the past 2-1/2 years, AFC has: (1) hosted six half-day meetings with partnership representatives to discuss project progress and planning activities; (2) coordinated two full-day skills-building conferences that drew more than 100 participants and included multiple sessions on the project's findings; (3) presented a session on "Transforming Society through Evaluation" at the American Evaluation Association's 1998 conference, and (4) coordinated a day-long conference in 1999, "Planning and Strategies for the Third Decade of AIDS," which included workshops on evaluation and featured representatives from each of the participating agencies.