Challenges of Participatory Evaluation within a Community-Based Health Promotion Partnership

Mujer Sana, Comunidad Sana—Healthy Women, Healthy Communities

Abstract

Evaluating multiple-member partnerships is always a challenging task. This article is based on our experiences using a participatory approach to evaluating a community-based health promotion research project. “Mujer Sana, Comunidad Sana—Healthy Women, Healthy Communities” was partnership-based, multi-sector, multicultural, and participatory. We describe our experiences working with participatory methods to evaluate the partnership per se. Three evaluation frameworks were applied sequentially by the authors and provided insight into the functioning of the partnership in a complex and changing environment. Our experiences suggest that, through the process of participatory evaluation, the partnership itself also changed in ways that were not fully captured at the time of the original project evaluation. We reflect on the process with questions that might help other groups to consider ways to evaluate partnerships in community-based, participatory health research projects with minority and majority community partners.