Center for Community Health and Evaluation launches CCHE.org

CCHE's new website shares tools and insights for improving community health

For nearly 35 years, the Center for Community Health and Evaluation (CCHE) has dedicated itself to improving community health through collaborative approaches to planning, assessment, and evaluation.

Now, CCHE, which is a part of Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI), will be able to reach even more communities with the launch of the center’s new website — CCHE.org.

Since its formation in 1990, CCHE has designed and evaluated health-related programs and initiatives throughout the United States, pioneering many tools and methods. The new website prominently features a range of services offered by CCHE, including evaluation, strategic learning, assessment, and capacity building.

“Our new website is a reflection of our ongoing journey, our dedication to racial justice, and our adaptability in an ever-changing landscape,” said CCHE Director Maggie Jones, MPH.

A Focus Areas section on the website provides insight into CCHE’s involvement with more than 300 community health projects nationwide. The section details the center’s collaboration with organizations, groups, and individuals to improve the health of their communities through community and public health, clinical improvement, innovation and integration, equity-focused initiatives, capacity-building programs and learning collaboratives, and systems, policy, and cross-sector collaboration.

“CCHE embeds learning and capacity building into its evaluation work with foundations and grantees because we want our tools and methods to keep providing benefit long after we are gone,” Jones said. “We want to share what we have developed.”

Reflecting this spirit of collaboration and sharing, the new website’s Tools and Resources section provides several developed products and tools that have emerged as part of CCHE’s work with communities and funders across the country. Some highlights:

• Measuring What Matters: CCHE developed this curriculum and toolkit to support nonprofits, community collaboratives, and funders that want to understand how their programs are making a difference and communicate the results. The toolkit breaks down evaluation into understandable steps that people can use to see if they are making progress, learn how to improve programs in real time, and share results with their stakeholders, including funders.
• Equitable Evaluation Discussion Guide: A work-in-progress, the guide is designed to be used by stakeholders as part of the evaluation planning process. It provides steps, roles, and language for inviting participants to share their experiences and approaches to strengthening equitable evaluation practices.
• Dose Toolkit: This toolkit explores using “dose method” as a way for evaluators and community practitioners to add up the impact of very different strategies using a common yardstick. Dose combines reach (the number of people affected by a strategy) and strength (the degree to which those people change their behavior).

The CCHE website also includes an About Us section that details the organization’s story, approach, and commitment to equity. And a CCHE timeline allows viewers to explore CCHE’s most noteworthy projects dating back to the organization’s formation in 1990.

“CCHE continues to learn and grow in every one of our evaluations. These past few years have pushed us in new ways as we shifted to an entirely virtual work environment, adapted our evaluation plans to reflect the needs of communities post-pandemic, and made explicit our commitment to racial justice and equitable evaluation,” Jones said. “These changes have been woven into how and why we do our work. Looking ahead, we will continue to walk the talk of evaluation as learning — as improving more than proving. We commit to continuing to show up with curiosity, a willingness to adapt, and the patience to listen.”

Join us in this new chapter

We invite you to visit CCHE.org and engage with our work, resources, and community. Your feedback and participation are invaluable as we continue to evolve and strive for healthier, more equitable communities.