Development of a stakeholder-engaged tool to evaluate community convening and promote community health

Background: Health systems support community health and well-being, and while many commit resources to convening in support of community-engaged communication interventions, they currently lack tools to evaluate this effort. This report describes one health system's mixed-methods stakeholder-engaged development of robust yet pragmatic convening assessment tools.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews and web surveys with key stakeholders informed a taxonomy of quality convening and accompanying survey tool. Initial evidence of validity and item variability were assessed descriptively.

Results: A 3-item survey aligned with high-priority convening constructs was developed with adequate variability in initial item responses. A companion 21-construct taxonomy organized by domain and stakeholder also resulted.

Conclusion: This project resulted in a taxonomy detailing the constructs of quality convening and an accompanying brief survey tool to meets the needs of groups convened by one health system. These tools provide a unique opportunity to measure the quality of community convening within the context of healthcare.