This article describes the evaluation approach for Be Well Communities—an initiative of MD Anderson Cancer Center to improve population health—and shares lessons learned for evaluating multifaceted community-based health initiatives. RTI International and MD Anderson developed a robust evaluation to capture changes in processes and outcomes over the multiyear, multicommunity initiative and across a wide range of evidence-based interventions for cancer prevention. The mixed methods evaluation includes data from collaborating organizations’ progress and supplemental reports and from stakeholder surveys and interviews. The evaluation balances addressing the evaluation questions with limiting the burden of data collection and reporting on organizations and providing them with technical assistance. We learned that successful evaluation of a continually expanding population health initiative requires that it be flexible and iteratively modified to meet the initiative’s evolving focus and evaluation needs. Further, aligning data sources across organizations implementing interventions focused on the same outcomes and using multiple evaluation methods makes it possible to accurately describe an initiative over time and provides a fuller picture of its impact. The Be Well Communities’ evaluation approach, with its demonstrated successes and lessons learned, can serve as a real-world model for other communities seeking to evaluate initiatives to improve population health.
