CEPA Research - Vulnerable Populations

CEPA has a long history of working with government agencies and NGOs whose missions focus on ameliorating the challenges facing vulnerable populations, e.g. homeless, Native Americans, poor and working poor families, young children, adolescents, the un- and under-insured.  Work includes providing coaching and technical assistance to nonprofits, needs assessment, and program evaluation.

Recent projects include:

Advocacy Policy Evaluation
CEPA and The Centers are evaluating three fiscal policy groups in Colorado is to gauge the impact of The Colorado Trust’s advocacy investments on health policy changes that lead to increased access.  Research questions include how the grantees’ advocacy efforts respond to a rapidly changing environment and to what extent their efforts have a positive impact on public awareness and the base of support for increased access, the strength of coalitions and alliances for increased access to health and their alignment around a shared policy agenda
For more information, contact Beverly Buck.

Homelessness
CEPA and its partners directed the Colorado Statewide Point-In-Time Homeless count and survey for summer 2006 and winter 2007.  Responsibilities included: participating on advisory committees; extensive coordinating and facilitating of stakeholders with multiple interests and agendas; developing sampling methodology for rural regions; designing and field-testing survey instruments in English and Spanish; developing training materials; planning logistics; training agency staff and volunteers; making complex decision-rules about duplicate data and persons who are not counted as homeless; supervising coding and data entry; cleaning data; creating variables; analyzing data; preparing and editing comprehensive reports of findings and recommendations.  
For more information, contact Tracey O’Brien.

Coaching NonProfits in Community Partnerships
The Colorado Trust’s Partnerships for Health Initiative is designed to help improve the coordination of health services at the community level. This initiative supports 13 community health partnerships statewide, consisting of local health departments, community-based organizations, government agencies and community members.  Each partnership has identified a Healthy People 2010 focus area important to its community.  CEPA works as a coach to partnerships providing ongoing technical assistance in all phases of creating, implementing, monitoring and sustaining the Initiative. 
For more information, contact Beverly Buck.

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