CPHHE-REACH Initiative: Evaluating Community Health Equity
This paper examines the evaluation of the Center for Promoting Health and Health Equity–Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (CPHHE-REACH) initiative, a CDC-funded program designed to reduce cardiovascular health disparities among African Americans in Omaha, Nebraska. The paper reviews the initiative's use of qualitative focus group methods and the Health Belief Model to assess safety and security barriers to physical activity in urban minority communities. It discusses the evaluation's strengths, including its theoretical grounding, as well as its limitations, such as convenience sampling and the absence of quantitative data. The paper also applies lessons from this evaluation to inform a proposed assessment of Maryland's Homeless Solutions Program.
- Introduction: Overview of CPHHE-REACH goals and paper scope
- Policy and Program Description: CDC-funded initiative targeting Omaha cardiovascular disparities
- Purpose of the Evaluation: Assessing physical activity barriers using Health Belief Model
- Evaluation Method and Results: Focus group analysis finds safety barriers to activity
- Strengths and Limitations of the Evaluation: Focus groups effective; sampling and data gaps noted
- Recommendations for Improvement: Stratified sampling and mixed-methods approach suggested
- Informing the Maryland Homeless Solutions Program Evaluation: Applying CPHHE-REACH lessons to homeless program evaluation
- Conclusion: Summary of evaluation insights and future applications
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper clearly links program description to evaluation purpose, helping readers understand why each methodological choice was made before it is critiqued.
- It situates the CPHHE-REACH evaluation within a broader literature by referencing comparable community-based physical activity studies, strengthening the analytical context.
- The applied section connecting lessons from CPHHE-REACH to the Maryland Homeless Solutions Program demonstrates real-world transferability of evaluation findings — a sophisticated move at the undergraduate level.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates evaluative synthesis: rather than simply describing a program, it assesses the methodological choices (focus groups, Health Belief Model, convenience sampling) against recognized standards, cites supporting and comparable literature, and translates those assessments into actionable recommendations. This mirrors standard program evaluation practice in public health and policy analysis.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a logical program-evaluation structure: it opens with a program description, then states the evaluation's purpose, presents methods and results, critiques strengths and limitations, offers recommendations, and closes by applying lessons to a second program context. Each section builds on the previous one, culminating in a practical transferability argument. The conclusion effectively synthesizes all prior sections without introducing new claims.
Introduction
The Center for Promoting Health and Health Equity–Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (CPHHE-REACH) Initiative was created to reduce cardiovascular health disparities and risk factors among African Americans in Omaha, Nebraska. This initiative aimed to improve healthier lifestyle choices that reduce or alleviate chronic diseases through policy, systems, and environmental improvements. One of the main objectives of this initiative was to evaluate the impact of safety and security factors on physical activity among urban minority communities. This paper analyzes the evaluation of the CPHHE-REACH initiative and discusses its strengths and limitations. Furthermore, it explores how this evaluation could inform a proposed evaluation of the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development's Homeless Solutions Program.
Policy and Program Description
The CPHHE-REACH Initiative is the policy and program that the study focused on. A university's Department of Health and Sciences Multicultural and Community Affairs (HS-MACA) created this initiative through its Center for Promoting Health and Health Equity (CPHHE) in 2014. In the same year, the initiative was awarded a three-year cooperative agreement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as part of their Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) program. The initiative aims to develop a new model for African Americans in Omaha, Nebraska, to reduce cardiovascular health disparities and risk factors.
CPHHE-REACH is a collaborative agreement between community-based agencies in Omaha's African American community. It aims to educate, develop, and implement policies, systems, and environmental improvements that promote healthier lifestyles and reduce chronic diseases.
Purpose of the Evaluation
The evaluation aimed to assess the behavioral changes and benefits of participating in physical activity through the CPHHE-REACH initiative for North Omaha's African American community members. The study specifically aimed to determine the impact of safety and security factors on physical activity behavior among urban minority communities. The evaluation also used the Health Belief Model (HBM) to predict physical activity behavior change (Kosoko-Lasaki et al., 2017).
Evaluation Method and Results
The evaluation method used in the study was a qualitative thematic analysis of focus group data collected from North Omaha African American community members who participated in the CPHHE-REACH initiative. The focus group participants' recorded statements were analyzed using the HBM to determine relationships that may help predict further outcomes and interventions. The study found that safety and security factors — such as crime, street quality, and lighting — were significant barriers to physical activity in urban minority communities (Kosoko-Lasaki et al., 2017).
In a similar study conducted by Kneeshaw-Price et al. (2015), researchers used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate the effectiveness of a community-based physical activity program among African American and Latino residents in a low-income urban community. The study found that community-based interventions, such as providing resources and creating partnerships with community organizations, effectively increased physical activity levels among participants.
Another study by King et al. (2015) evaluated the effectiveness of a community-wide campaign to increase physical activity levels among African Americans. The study used a pre-test/post-test design and found that the campaign effectively increased physical activity levels among participants. The study also found that social support and community involvement were important factors in promoting physical activity behavior change.
In summary, the CPHHE-REACH initiative aimed to reduce cardiovascular health disparities and risk factors among African Americans in Omaha through policy, systems, and environmental improvements. The evaluation method was a qualitative thematic analysis of focus group data collected from North Omaha African American community members. The study found that safety and security were significant barriers to physical activity in urban minority communities. Other studies have also found that community-based interventions, social support, and community involvement effectively promote physical activity behavior change among African Americans.
Conclusion
Evaluating the CPHHE-REACH initiative provides insights into the effectiveness of community-based interventions in promoting physical activity behavior change among African Americans. The use of focus groups to collect qualitative data and the Health Belief Model as a theoretical framework were strengths of the evaluation. In contrast, the convenience sampling method used to recruit participants and the lack of quantitative data were notable limitations. The proposed evaluation of the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development's Homeless Solutions Program could benefit from the use of focus groups to understand participants' experiences and attitudes, the Health Belief Model to identify the factors that influence health behaviors, and a mixed-methods approach to comprehensively assess program effectiveness.
References
Kosoko-Lasaki, S., Cook, C. T., O'Brien, R. L., Gittner, L. S., Hussaini, S. M. Q., & Kessel, B. (2017). Urban minority community safety and its impact on physical activity: The Center for Promoting Health and Health Equity–Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (CPHHE-REACH) Initiative. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 4(6), 1196–1205. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-017-0404-7
Kneeshaw-Price, S. H., Saelens, B. E., Sallis, J. F., Glanz, K., Frank, L. D., Kerr, J., & Hannon, P. A. (2015). Child behavior and parent perception of safety in relation to youth walking and biking. Journal of Physical Activity and Health, 12(S1), S110–S118.
King, A. C., Winter, S. J., Sheats, J. L., Rosas, L. G., Buman, M. P., Salvo, D., Rodriguez, N. M., Seguin, R. A., Moran, M., Garber, R., Broderick, B., & Zieff, S. G. (2015). Leveraging citizen science and information technology for population physical activity promotion. Translational Behavioral Medicine, 5(1), 77–84.
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