This posting contains the five interrelated presentations associated with the panel presentation for session 688. Panel Presentation Abstract: In their most recent cooperative agreement, the National Asthma Control Program (NACP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has required that their state partners collaborate with partnerships and use evaluation to facilitate, document, and sustain the gains of these partnerships. In this panel, the utility of evaluation for local asthma partnerships is explored in three parts. In the first presentation, an overview of the common partnership evaluation approaches used by funded partners, as well as some initial findings are presented. The second presentation provides a more detailed description of evaluating coalitions at the building and maintenance stages using the lessons learned from three funded states. Finally, a description of a capacity building response to partnership evaluation is presented, a recent addition to the Learning and Growing through Evaluation Guide for asthma programs. Individual Presentation Titles/Abstracts: * Discovering Factors Associated with Increased Use of Evaluation Among State Asthma Partnerships by A Perkins - Partnerships are valuable resources in chronic disease management. Evaluation can bolster partnership efforts by identifying needs of coalitions at different stages of development and increasing transparency to stakeholders. The National Asthma Control Program required its 36 funded partners to evaluate the maintenance and expansion of their partnerships. To determine which factors were associated with increased use of evaluation, the National Asthma Control Program examined data from evaluator self-assessments, strategic evaluation plans, and program documents of 36 funded partners. Partnerships ranged from statewide coalitions to regional planning groups. Differences in characteristics of partnerships with high and low use of evaluation are presented to explain rationale for the NACP’s response to building evaluation capacity within asthma collaborative partners. These findings highlight the relative importance of membership recruitment and maintenance, consistency between partnership activities and state asthma program goals, and an assessment of evaluation capacity when planning this type of evaluation. * Using Local Perspectives to Identify Practice Based Evidence in Chronic Disease Partnerships, three PPT examples from New Mexico (S. Moeller), Wisconsin (K. Grimes) and Rhode Island (S. Ekerholm & D. Robinson) - The National Asthma Control Program invited experienced evaluators to provide their experiences on their work with state asthma partnerships. This presentation describes how three evaluators were able to navigate around common barriers in partnership evaluation as well as craft a responsive approach to the changing needs of their partnership. New Mexico’s relatively new coalition is using evaluation to advance development of its leadership structure. In Rhode Island, a coalition in its maintenance stage, an empowerment model was linked with the creation of new policies and expansion of membership to include nonprofessional stakeholders. In Wisconsin, a coalition at the institutionalization stage, the evaluation led to creation of new procedures for leadership interface and distribution of funding. Embedded in narratives are their approaches to evaluation and recommendations for simplifying partnership evaluations. * A Guided Response to Partners in Evaluating their Partnerships by R. Shrestha-Kuwahara & L. Hester - Partnerships can be optimized when evaluation methods are appropriately matched with stakeholder needs and the partnership’s stage of growth. To facilitate evaluation capacity building within asthma state partnerships, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Asthma Control Program (NACP) collaborated with an independent contractor to develop a supplemental module on evaluating partnerships for the award-winning “Learning and Growing through Evaluation State Asthma Program Evaluation Guide.” This module applies generic strategies presented in the CDC Framework for Evaluating Public Health Programs to aid NACP grantees with designing, implementing, and utilizing partnership evaluation findings and tailoring their evaluations to understand their partnerships’ specific needs. The CDC solicited feedback on the partnership module from NACP grantees using a collaborative review process to integrate their perspectives on partnership development, improvement, and maintenance. This presentation provides an overview of the guide and the merits of its tailored approach for partnership evaluation.#publichealth #CDC #asthma #TheoriesofEvaluation #Collaborative,ParticipatoryandEmpowermentEval #SystemsinEvaluation #Coalition #RhodeIsland #chronicdisease #EvaluationUse #2012Conference #Partnership #Wisconsin #HealthEvaluation #NewMexico #Collaboration