Session Description: The purpose of this session is to explore the challenges associated with evaluating environmental change strategies and identify methods to assess the effectiveness of these strategies. As a point of clarification, for purposes of this session, environmental change strategies refer to population-based interventions that aim to change the environment or context in which individuals make decisions and not issues related to the evaluation of natural resources, biodiversity, and conservation. With the increase in the translation of research to policy and other environmental change strategies, it is imperative that we understand the most appropriate methodological tools available to analyze the effects, and outcomes of these strategies.
Kristi Pettibone is Director of The MayaTech Corporation’s Center for Community Prevention and Treatment Research. She has over 10 years experience managing, directing, and guiding public health policy research and evaluation projects. Dr. Pettibone evaluated community-based environmental change strategies as part of a cross-site evaluation of the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s (CSAP) Strategic Prevention Framework-State Incentive Grant initiative. Dr. Pettibone has also worked on several evaluations for CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and provided technical assistance in evaluating environmental change strategies to CDC’s Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention grantees. She holds a Ph.D. in Policy Sciences (health policy concentration) from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.