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CURRENT PROJECTS
Transtria has had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects with partners in local, state and national settings. Please click on one of the logos above to learn more about the active projects in our portfolio.
MEN ON THE MOVE
Overview: This community-based participatory project will assess the current educational and economic opportunities available for African American men in Pemiscot County and support new opportunities for educational and economic growth in order to directly and indirectly improve health and well-being. Through a historical relationship between Saint Louis University Prevention Research Center and the Pemiscot County Heart Health Coalition, the coalition identified lack of jobs and educational opportunities as the most critical issues affecting the health and well-being of their community.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to:
- Develop a plan to improve access to educational and economic opportunities
- Develop and evaluate an enhanced general educational development (GED) course
- Create an economic development plan to stimulate economic growth and job creation in Pemiscot County
Partners:
Saint Louis University Prevention Research Center,
Pemiscot County Heart Health Coalition,
Pemiscot County Community Coalition and many other local government and non-profit agencies
Our Role: Transtria is responsible for providing technical assistance with regard to
- Development, training, implementation and management of a database system
- Cognitive Response Testing (CRT) training
- Qualitative interview training
- Interviews with community organizations
- Research, planning and technical assistance with implementation of GED and Job Readiness programs
- Research and planning for an economic development plan
Population: African American men between the ages of 18 and 45 living in a rural, economically depressed area of southeast Missouri (Pemiscot County)
TEN TOE EXPRESS
Overview: Citizens for Modern Transit, a St. Louis transit advocacy group, was funded to begin a new initiative in St. Louis, the Ten Toe Express program. The Ten Toe Express program focuses on increasing the number of older adults in the St. Louis community who link walking with public transit use resulting in a healthier, more active lifestyle. In collaboration with Transtria L.L.C., Citizens for Modern Transit implemented the Ten Toe Express program consisting of two main components: 1) distribution of walking kits, and 2) creation of weekly walking groups. The walking kits consist of a digital pedometer, walking and eating logs, walking tour maps of different destinations throughout the St. Louis area, a coupon book to increase access to opportunities for physical activity and healthy eating, and educational materials to encourage participants to walk more and eat healthier. The walking groups serve to increase levels of physical activity, increase familiarity with public transit, and to build supportive networks for being physically active.
Purpose: The main goals of the Ten Toe Express project are to:
- Increase the proportion of older adults who meet recommendations for physical activity and balanced eating patterns through educational and promotional intervention activities targeting increased walking for transportation and recreation as well as increased selection and purchasing of nutritious foods.
- Increase perceived community access to opportunities for physical activity and healthy eating.
- Strengthen collaborative efforts to implement local public policies that promote physical activity and healthy eating through dissemination of walking campaign findings.
Partners:
Citizens for Modern Transit,
Missouri Foundation for Health,
OASIS
Our Role:
- Research, planning, and technical assistance with grant writing
- Develop nutrition and physical activity education materials
- Participate in recruitment efforts
- Develop online evaluation materials (i.e. pre/post surveys, walking and eating logs)
- Participate in intervention activities (e.g., walk leader trainings, kick-off events)
- Evaluate the success of the program (e.g., collect, analyze, and disseminate project data)
Population: The Ten Toe Express program targets older adults (aged 55 and older) throughout the St. Louis community.
Schools and Communities in Partnership Project
Overview: The Schools and Communities in Partnership Project is a collaborative effort to promote health and wellness in the Jennings Public School District, which includes nine schools. This project will assess the school and community physical activity and nutrition environments over a two year period.
Principles: These tasks will be guided by four principles.
- To be school-driven and guided by the Jennings School wellness policies.
- To be community-linked by creating and enhancing connections between Jennings School District and community stakeholders.
- To be evidence-based using feasible, efficacious, and safe practices in SCIPP activities.
- To be evaluation focused understanding that this process is a key component for assessing the Jennings School District’s wellness operations.
Purpose: Transtria will use an evidence-based evaluation framework to promote the main objectives of SCIPP.
- To increase physical activity levels among Jennings School District students.
- To increase fresh fruit and vegetable intake among Jennings School District students.
- To reduce tobacco exposure, enhance tobacco education and awareness, and change tobacco beliefs and attitudes among Jennings School District students.
Partners: Missouri Foundation for Health, Jennings School District, The community of Jennings, Saint Louis University, Healthy Youth Partnership, American Lung Association, Saint Louis County Department of Health
Our Role:
- Conduct audits of the school and community environments.
- Conduct direct observations of the nutrition and physical activity environments in the schools.
- Facilitate group model building sessions that capture the perspectives of community members, addressing the influences of childhood obesity through this lens.
- Create individualized school reports assessing the school and surrounding community’s physical activity and healthy eating environment.
Capacity Building in the Partnership for Preconception Health
Overview: The Maternal, Child, Family Health Coalition (MCFHC) of Saint Louis has established a Partnership for preconception health including local health care practitioners, non-profits, foundations, and faith-based organizations. Transtria has been tasked with evaluating the capacity building of the partnership over a two year grant period.
Purpose: Transtria will use an evidence-based evaluation framework to assess capacity building within the Partnership. Transtria will examine the main purposes of the Partnership.
- To identify social determinants of health in the community.
- To develop a more aware community and provide legislators and the community with knowledge related to preconception health care.
Partners: Maternal, Child, Family Health Coalition, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Our Role:
- Provide an evaluation framework to clearly define current and ongoing efforts in regard to partnership capacity building.
- Develop a capacity building survey to be distributed multiple times throughout the course of the grant period to identify change in the partnership over time.
- Construct an asset map to provide an illustration of the partnership’s resources, potential partner contributions, and areas the partnership can strengthen. This map will be modified in year two of the partnership’s existence to reflect change.
- Provide preliminary logic models as needed to frame the evaluation and assist in the partnership’s identification of strategies and action steps.
- Generate a report at the end of each grant year incorporating all findings.
Evaluation of Hamilton County, Ohio Communities Putting Prevention to Work
Overview: Hamilton County Public Health (HCPH) was awarded a Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) grant in March 2010 for a county-wide obesity prevention program. The two-year initiative, funded through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is a countywide, collaborative, and community-based program focused on changing social norms by creating policy, systems, and environment changes to improve nutrition and increase physical activity with the ultimate goal of preventing and reducing obesity.
Purpose: The purpose of the Hamilton County CPPW evaluation is to capture the successes, challenges, and lessons learned related to the initiative’s strategies for healthy eating and active living policy, system, and environmental changes. The evaluation is designed to measure planning and implementation activities as well as short-term impacts relative to the initiative’s main goals of improving nutrition, increasing physical activity, and reducing obesity throughout the county during the 2-year funding period, with an intention of establishing a foundation for measuring the initiative’s individual and community-wide impacts on childhood obesity.
Partners:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Hamilton County Public Health
Our Role:
- Establish an overall evaluation plan.
- Recommending tools and resources for data collection.
- Conducting process evaluation throughout the initiative.
- Generating reports, recommendations, and delivering updates.
- Provide evaluation coordination support to HCPH CPPW staff.
Population: The target audience for the CPPW initiative consists of underserved, high risk populations who reside in Hamilton County, including African Americans, people of Appalachian decent, and mothers/grandmothers, as well as decision makers and other childhood obesity influencers.
National Association for Chronic Disease Directors
Overview: The National Association for Chronic Disease Directors (NACDD) is a non-profit public health organization committed to serving the chronic disease program directors of each state and U.S. jurisdiction. These efforts increase the capacity of chronic disease units in state and territorial health departments through education, training, and technical assistance related to programs, services, and operations. NACDD communicates and coordinates events and activities with representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to ensure chronic disease units have up-to-date information and resources to support their work. Transtria is contracted to evaluate the technical assistance provided to state and territorial health departments’ chronic disease units by CDC project officers. CDC project officers support state and territorial health departments receiving federal funding for a variety of programs and services, including chronic disease prevention and control. Specifically, project officers are responsible for monitoring the use of federal funds and the quality of program delivery, evaluation, and reporting.
Purpose: The project has two primary aims:
- To ascertain state and territorial health departments’ satisfaction with the quantity and quality of technical assistance provided by CDC project officers.
- To understand how CDC project officers’ technical assistance supports the transition to collaborative and cooperative chronic disease programs in states and territories.
Partners: National Association of Chronic Disease Directors, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, State Health Departments
Our Role:
- Provide an evaluation framework to clearly define current and ongoing efforts in regard to CDC Project Officer technical assistance.
- Conduct focus groups with state chronic disease directors around issues relating to CDC Project Officer technical assistance.
- Develop a survey to be distributed to identify state health department staff’s perceptions of CDC Project Officer’s technical assistance.
- Generate a report incorporating all findings and including recommendations for improvement.
ACTIVE LIVING BY DESIGN
Overview: The Active Living by Design (ALbD) project is an evaluation of a national initiative that establishes innovative approaches to increase physical activity through community design, public policies and communications strategies. The evaluation of grantees, ALbD and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation staff and other stakeholders includes assessing the environmental impacts of physical projects and related policy changes; determining the influence of these interventions on physical activity behaviors; documenting the range of interventions implemented across the communities and their associated intended and unintended accomplishments; and identifying strengths and challenges in the process of planning, developing and implementing the interventions. The evaluation will also provide recommendations for building community design initiatives to increase physical activity, including relevant policy and environment changes as well as promotional and programmatic activities.
Purpose: The main goals of the ALbD project are to:
- Assess the impact of active living interventions on environments related to physical activity.
- Provide evidence of the impact of “start-up” resources on the capacity of communities to create change in support of active living.
- Increase understanding of community responses to comprehensive intervention approaches involving policy, environment, programmatic, and promotions strategies.
- Identify strengths and challenges encountered by communities in the planning, development, and implementation of active living interventions.
Partners:
Active Living by Design,
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
Saint Louis University School of Public Health
Our Role:
- Gather evidence of intervention planning, development, and implementation activities
- Review and summarize evidence of intervention activities and their accomplishments
- Develop and disseminate summary reports of findings
Population: The ALbD project evaluates 25 diverse communities across the United States, including those with large racial/ethnic minority, child and older adult populations; communities in urban, suburban and rural settings; and low-resource and high-resource communities. Recommendations for building community design initiatives to increase physical activity will focus primarily on environments for children and relatively disadvantaged populations.
Reports:
Case reports
Cross-site report
Publications:
American Journal of Preventive Medicine; the Best Practices supplement
American Journal of Preventive Medicine; the Evaluation supplement
SDOH
Overview: The Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) project is designed to improve practical understanding about how to develop, implement, and evaluate interventions; encourage organizational change; and promote policy initiatives that target social determinants of health contributing to health inequities by race/ethnicity, income, social class, and other related factors. In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sponsored a forum to highlight activities and interventions that address social determinants of health to reduce health disparities. A workbook was designed and developed for practitioners, Promoting Health Equity: A Resource to Help Communities Address Social Determinants of Health. In addition, an interactive training workshop is under development for CDC staff and program-affiliated community partners working on projects related to social determinants of health (e.g., REACH, PRCs).
Purpose: The main goals of the SDOH project are to:
- Support increased efforts by the CDC and its program-affiliated community partners to incorporate social determinants into public health assessment, intervention and evaluation efforts.
- Increase understanding about how to choose the factors on which to intervene, how to incorporate new partners into social determinants work, and how the public health community can influence social policies to reduce health disparities.
- Present ideas from communities participating in the forum and provide resources (e.g., surveillance systems, websites, journal articles, books).
Partners:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Saint Louis University School of Public Health,
Innovative Graphic Services
Our Role:
- Research and review of social determinants work
- Develop workbook design, content, format, and resources
- Coordinate development and review of workbook
- Design training and develop training manual
- Evaluate workbook and training
Population: The workbook and training have the potential to reach a wide variety of public health practitioners and community partners through dissemination efforts in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
System Dynamics Modeling
Overview: As one of the six teams participating in the System Dynamics Modeling project we are developing a community-based system dynamics model of childhood obesity. Our goal is to identify and understand social determinants to childhood obesity that are specific to the West End neighborhood of St. Louis, MO. The team will calibrate the model and systematically compare it with five other team’s childhood obesity models.
Principles: These tasks will be guided by the following principles:
- To be community-based by gathering data from community members.
- To be evidence-based using an empirically-developed computer simulation model.
- To be dissemination-focused understanding that this process is a key component for stimulating discussion in the community.
Partners: Social Systems Design Lab at Washington University in St. Louis, West End Full Gospel Baptist Church, National Institutes of Health
Purpose: Transtria will engage and train partners to promote community action around childhood obesity
- To identify and understand social determinants of childhood obesity.
- To analyze the effects of potential policies and environmental changes to address childhood obesity.
- To encourage community-driven change around effective strategies.
Partners: Social Systems Design Lab at Washington University in St. Louis, West End Full Gospel Baptist Church, National Institutes of Health
Our Role:
- Conduct audits and direct observation of the community environment.
- Train community members to conduct audits and direct observation.
- Provide scientific leadership on community-engaged participatory research, social determinants, and healthy eating and active living interventions.
Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities
Overview:
Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities (HKHC), funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a national program that focuses on healthy eating and active living policy and environmental changes to support healthier communities for children and families across the United States. HKHC places special emphasis on reaching children who are at highest risk for obesity on the basis of race/ethnicity, income and/or geographic location.
Transtria has planned and piloted evaluation processes, methods and measures to assess opportunities for physical activity and access to affordable healthy foods for children and families. These processes, evaluation methods and measures were piloted with 9 leading sites that received HKHC funding in December 2008; and will be used to evaluate an additional 40 community sites that received funding in December 2009. Transtria is conducting site visits to all of the community partnerships using a multi-method approach to evaluation that learns about the communities strengths, challenges, and lessons learned that can be shared with the field.
Our Role: The main goals of the evaluation of Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities initiative are:
- To coordinate data collection, coding, and analysis for the evaluation through the new web-based project management system (HKHC Community Dashboard) and provide training and technical assistance for use of this system.
- To provide training and technical assistance to community partnerships on their local data collection and analysis efforts through use of the Assessment & Evaluation Toolkit.
- To conduct a quantitative cross-site impact evaluation among a subset of community partnerships.
- To conduct a qualitative cross-site process and impact evaluation among all 49 community partnerships.
Partners:
Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities,
Active Living By Design,
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
Washington University Institute for Public Health,
Washington University Social System Design Laboratory,
University of Memphis
Population: HKHC focuses on children and families who are at high risk for obesity in diverse communities throughout the United States.
Logic Models:
Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities Logic Model - Layout 1
Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities Logic Model - Layout 2
Evidence Review System
Overview: The Review of Environmental and Policy Interventions for Childhood Obesity Prevention (EPNP) program is an effort to reduce rates of childhood obesity in lower income and minority populations. Transtria is conducting a review of the research and practice-based literature to identify evidence-based environmental and policy change interventions that are most likely to be effective in halting the rise of childhood obesity. This project includes developing a process and framework for ongoing reviews, identifying evidence-based, effective, promising, and emerging strategies, and developing a method for disseminating this information to researchers, practitioners, and funders. Transtria will use a collaborative approach for the review process that will involve experts in environmental and policy interventions for nutrition and physical activity.
Purpose: The main objectives of the EPNP project are:
- To create a systematic annual review process (including an evidence hierarchy) to classify environmental and policy interventions for childhood obesity prevention into levels of evidence (e.g., scientific, peer review, promising practice).
- To identify environmental and policy interventions in nutrition and physical activity with applicability in children aged 3-18 emerging from existing evidence-based review processes (e.g., Community Guide, review articles).
- To review and summarize emerging evidence-based environmental and policy interventions in nutrition and physical activity with applicability in children aged 3-18 with respect to a range of research- and practice-based levels of evidence.
Partners: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Washington University Public Health Institute
Our Role:
- Develop a systematic annual review process.
- Identification of research and practice-based environmental and policy interventions in nutrition and physical activity.
- Abstraction and review of environmental and policy interventions.
- Summarization and dissemination of findings to partners and key individuals in the field of public health.
- Create an illustration for each strategy to provide a digestible and easily understood snapshot of the evidence-base.
- Generate a report identifying methods, measures, gaps in the evidence-base, and the literature surrounding 24 strategies related to childhood obesity.
Population: Minority and lower-income children ages 3-18
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