Lewis and Clark Co, MT: Program Evaluator
County: Lewis & Clark County, MT

Skill Area: Program Evaluation

Internship summary
The Lewis & Clark City-County Health Dept. serves Lewis & Clark County, Montana and it's principal city, Helena. The mission of the health department is to protect and improve the health of the residents of Lewis and Clark County. The Home Visiting program, a Maternal and Child Health (MCH) program, is requesting an intern. The Home Visiting program uses the Health Data Information System (HDIS) for collection of our MCH data. We use the following screening tools: Life Skills Progression (LSP) screen; Ages and Stages developmental screen; ACOG domestic violence assessment; 5Ps substance abuse screen; High Risk Pregnancy Intake & Outcome (HRPIO) tool; High Risk Infant Intake & Outcome (HRIIO) tool; and the Edinburgh depression screen. In addition, we collect infant feeding data for the first 12 months of life. Lewis & Clark County receives Title V federal funding for Public Health Home Visiting (PHHV) and the MCH Block Grant.

The Home Visiting program serves pregnant women and children from birth to age 5. The Home Visiting program has formed a coalition with St. Peter's hospital to promote successful breastfeeding. We are in the process of forming a broader coalition that will include obstetricians, family doctors, pediatricians, consumers, and other local agencies serving pregnant women and infants. During late winter, the coalition will gather data on breastfeeding from women who have given birth at St. Peter's through a survey to be conducted during Spring, 2010.

The project for which we are requesting an internship will focus on developing program evaluation tools to measure outcomes of the breast feeding project and the relationship of interventions to those outcomes.

Purpose
The purpose of the internship is to develop program evaluation tools to measure the effectiveness of specific interventions on outcomes of the breast feeding project. This will be a multi-year project that will eventually include a longitudinal study of how the duration of breastfeeding affects several specific developmental measures. The first year of the project will focus on developing tools to measure specific hospital and Home Visiting interventions. The goals and objectives listed below are for the internship of the first year of the project only.

Goals
Goal 1: Develop an ongoing, multiple use client satisfaction survey; recommend changes to the HDIS system to accommodate data collected through the survey.
Goal 2: Design data collection to measure outcomes of breastfeeding in Home Visiting clients in 3 areas: (1) correlation between use of breast shield and length (in weeks) of breastfeeding; (2) correlation of number of Home Visits and length of breastfeeding; (3) correlation of group breastfeeding classes during pregnancy and duration of breastfeeding.
Goal 3: Prepare a template for reporting outcomes to stakeholders including MCH clients, St. Peter's Hospital, Breastfeeding Coalition, MCH Public Health Home Visiting Program and Maternal and Child Health funders, the County Health Board, County Commissioners, and general public.

Objectives
Goal 1 Objectives:
a. Gather and analyze MCH client satisfaction surveys currently done in the 5 largest Montana counties and best practice surveys from other programs nationwide that serve pregnant women, infants, and young children.
2. Design a simple to use survey.
3. Design changes to HDIS system to collect survey data, tie survey data to specific outcome measures, and report on survey results.
Goal 2 objectives:
a. Analyze data currently available through the HDIS system, breastfeeding survey, and through MCH and PHHV reports.
b. Recommend data that must be collected to answer the outcome questions posed.
c. Recommend user friendly changes to the HDIS system to collect the data.
Goal 3 Objectives:
a. Prepare a template that will include easy to understand graphs to use to describe outcomes to major stakeholders, possible funding sources, and the public.

Data or analytic tasks and activities involved
1. Meta-analysis of MCH client satisfaction surveys (Montana and nationally).
2. Review of HDIS system capabilities and current reports produced by HDIS system.
3. Research on breastfeeding intervention outcome studies and reports available through NIH, other states' public health programs, CDC, IBCLC programs, and other sources.
4. Review of Breastfeeding survey completed by Breastfeeding Coalition and St. Peter's hospital.

Required data or analytic skills
Software applications: Word, Excel
Preferred: Experience using large health related data bases
Must have excellent analytical abilities
Prefer: Experience using and/or designing outcome tools

Begin date
06/01/2010

Housing assistance available?
We will try to find temporary housing via a sublet. In addition, Craig's list is available and summer dormitory space may be available.

Public transportation available?
Busses are available. Helena has a population of 30,000 - it is a biking and walking friendly city.

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