Measuring Success

Help your organization appreciate the value of your Connect for Health program—and measure its long-term impacts.

As a team, with input from your stakeholders, you will decide what are meaningful metrics that you will monitor to understand the adoption of Connect for Health.

Some ways of measuring the impacts of your Connect for Health program.
We realize that every organization is unique, and your Connect for Health program may look different based on your unique factors.

At a minimum you want to be able to show:

  • Your program is impacting desired outcomes such as changes in BMI and outcomes that matter most to families

  • Your program is meeting the needs of families, clinicians, and your organization

Engage families and clinicians in candid feedback and incorporate their suggestions into your program as appropriate. Surveying clinicians and families can provide meaningful results indicators for the success of your program. Connect for Health has surveys that can help track families' experience with care and clinicians’ views.

During the implementation study, Connect for Health used the RE-AIM framework for evaluating the success and outcomes of our interventions with an equity lens to ensure all patients were equally benefitting. You may find this approach helpful at your site.

About the RE-AIM framework.
RE-AIM is a planning and evaluation model that addresses five aspects of individual- and setting-level outcomes: Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance.

  1. Reach refers to the number and demographic makeup of the people in the program and seeks to see that all populations are equitably served.

  2. Effectiveness is the impact of the program on outcomes (e.g. negative effects, quality of life, and economic outcomes.) Are the outcomes equitable across populations?

  3. Adoption reflects the reaction of the clinicians who initiated the program. Are all settings equitably adopting the program?

  4. Implementation is how clinicians maintained interest and continued to use the program as intended. This aspect also measures time and costs. 

  5. Maintenance is the extent to which the program is adopted as part of the organization's ongoing practices and policies. 

Adapted from: Glasgow et al., 1999, Am J Public Health

The results from our implementation study will be available soon! Sign-up here to receive an email notification when we post them here.

Applying the RE-AIM Framework

REACH
Equitable Sociodemographic Outreach

How well is your program is reaching your population?

Try to determine and track:

  1. How many patients you are reaching

  2. Whether that group shows an equitable representation of your overall sociodemographic/community

  3. Who is NOT being reached (And are there better/additional ways to reach more people?)

EFFECTIVENESS
Patient-reported Outcomes

Survey families periodically as they adopt the suggestions of Connect for Health. Gather experiential data on their experiences with care and track quality-of-life measures.

Download a survey tool to monitor patient/family experience

BMI Assessment

Program outcomes are aligned with HEDIS (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set) measures and can help your organization understand if you are providing guideline adherent care and satisfy performance metrics that hospitals must report to payers. Measures include nutrition and physical activity counseling codes along with BMI diagnosis codes.

ADOPTION
Equitable Program Use

Who is using the program? Is the program being adopted equitably? Your organization may monitor the utilization of the clinician decision support tools to see if the tools are being used?

IMPLEMENTATION
Clinician Acceptability

How are your clinicians responding to the Connect for Health program? Do they feel as though they are having an easier time identifying and intervening with at-risk patients?

Download a survey tool to monitor clinician acceptability

MAINTENANCE
Strategies for maintaining your program

As your Connect for Health program begins to show results, be sure you make those successes known. Periodically revisit the programs objectives and baseline metrics with your organization and look for opportunities to publicize success within your organization.

You may find that additional adaptations from this suggested program would be useful. You should feel free to adapt Connect for Health to suit your community, clinicians, and local culture.

Check-in with leadership to remind them of their commitment and to ask for their input with regard to maintaining the program. A brief survey can be a great tool for sustaining periodic awareness and reinforcing their support.

Download our Clinical Sustainability Assessment for leaders/clinicians