In 2001 the Minnesota Legislature established the Eliminating Health Disparities Initiative mandating the allocation of competitive grants to local programs to close the gap in the health status of African Americans/Africans, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Hispanic/Latinos in Minnesota compared with whites in eight priority health areas. The initiative supports 24 community grants to implement innovative strategies to address racial/ethnic disparities and social determinants of health. Grants support policy and system change projects that will lead to sustained reductions in health disparities. In this poster, we will provide a project overview, three examples of policy and systems change projects, and their evaluations. We will include a summary of lessons learned and outline the challenges of evaluating systems and policy change efforts designed to address the underlying social and economic conditions which impact community health outcomes.I#MultiethnicIssuesinEvaluation #EvaluationUse #AdvocacyandPolicyChange #Cluster,Multi-SiteandMulti-LevelEval #Collaborative,ParticipatoryandEmpowermentEval #2012Conference #IndigenousPeoplesinEvaluation