Session Description: In 1999, with the publication of its Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health, CDC signaled its desire to increase the quality of program evaluation and use of evaluation findings for program improvement. Great strides have been made in program evaluation of public health in the decade that followed. And recently, with the creation of the new Associate Director for Program office, CDC has a focal point for extending and improving performance measurement and evaluation of its efforts. Still, challenges remain. Dr. Collins will talk about the challenges of program evaluation in public health and at CDC, some of the opportunities for increasing the leverage and impact of program evaluation and performance measurement, and some key current initiatives and new directions being pursued at CDC as examples of how one large organization can effectively employ performance measurement and program evaluation for program improvement.
Janet Collins is Associate Director for Program in the Office of the Director, CDC. She joined CDC in 1990 as Chief of the Surveillance and Evaluation Research Branch in the Division of Adolescent and School Health, and, for the past four years, served as Director of CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, directing a diverse portfolio of programmatic and scientific initiatives across ten Divisions. Dr. Collins is a respected voice in program evaluation with the public health community; she earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Stanford University.