Environmental Health Services/Program Evaluation
This course is delivered as a two-day short course.
The course is designed for those who are interested, or practising in environmental health and introduces participants to the evaluation of environmental health services or programs. The course is relevant to all public health programs or services but has an emphasis on environmental health, using a range of EH case-studies to illustrate key concepts.
Topics covered include: the importance of evaluation, aspects of programs/services that can be evaluated, and scoping and planning the evaluation. Stakeholder consultation and the use of program logic modelling in the planning and negotiation of evaluation questions and indicators is presented. Indicator development that includes the use of the DPSEEA environmental health indicator development framework will also be introduced. The subject also introduces the student to the strengths, limitations and common design and logistical issues concerning the evaluation of particular aspects of environmental health programs e.g. program efficiency and quality of implementation, and effectiveness with respect to one or a set of desired outcomes. Study design and data collection methods and issues with their choice will be introduced but not covered in a lot of detail – as a large number of courses in qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis are available elsewhere.
It is expected that students who attend the course will be better able to:
- Scope an evaluation – identify priority questions, draw boundaries, know what information you or others may want from the evaluation
- Develop questions, performance indicators or the front end of an evaluation framework for the program they are responsible
- Confidently communicate and negotiate with evaluators and key stakeholders
- Recognise good practice in evaluation
- Interpret evaluation findings
- Recognise and adopt strategies to maximise the utilisation of evaluation findings
Participants will be provided with the opportunity to reflect and at times apply the learning’s to a work-based environmental program/service.
The course is held at The University of Melboourne. If 10 or more people are interested in doing the course in a particular state or workplace, the short course can be held there.
For information about the content or delivery of this course contact:
Helen Jordan
+61 03 8344 0652
h.jordan@ unimelb.edu.au
For information about the cost, timetable, or application process:
Joy Yeadon
+61 03 8344 0710
j.yeadon@ unimelb.edu.au