Evaluation Services for the Mississippi Delta Health Collaborative

The Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH), Mississippi Delta Health Collaborative (MDHC) was established to ameliorate cardiovascular health outcomes, specifically heart disease, stroke, and hypertension rates. Efforts are focused on the following targeted counties: Bolivar, Carroll, Coahoma, Desoto, Holmes, Humphreys, Issaquena, Leflore, Panola, Quitman, Sharkey, Sunflower, Tallahatchie, Tate, Tunica, Warren, Washington and Yazoo County . The MSDH seeks to partner with an academic university in Mississippi to provide evaluation and surveillance services. Assigned staff will work with the MSDH Internal Program Evaluation Lead to evaluate all Mississippi Delta Health Collaborative initiatives and activities. The institution or university will assist with developing a framework for evaluating projects. This includes developing and testing methodologies for assessing the impact of community and clinical-based interventions. In addition, the institution or university will assist in program monitoring using measures developed in a collaborative process with the Evaluation and Epidemiology Cores. The academic university will track progress towards accomplishment of short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals of the Mississippi Delta Health Collaborative. The Internal Program Evaluation Lead will provide technical guidance and evaluation expertise to carry out evaluation activities. The Evaluation Core will oversee the overall evaluation framework design with common community and clinical measures based on evidence based public health resources, including the approved and credible publications on Evaluation Framework. The Internal Program Evaluation Lead and evaluator assigned by the university will produce a final report documenting the impact of the interventions in terms of new health promotion policies, increased capacity, behavioral change, application of theory, and reduction in cardiovascular disease risk factors, healthcare disparities and the social determinants of health.