Developmental Evaluation of the BUILD Health Challenge

The Change Our Client Seeks

The BUILD Health Challenge is a national effort to strengthen multi-sector, community-driven partnerships to reduce the health disparities caused by system-based or social inequity. BUILD is a coalition of 11 national and regional funders—including the de Beaumont Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Colorado Health Foundation—collaborating with 19 communities’ hospitals and health systems, local health departments, and community-based organizations. The coalition has a shared commitment to moving resources, attention, and action upstream to reduce health disparities and make sustainable improvements in community health.

The Role We’re Playing

Equal Measure has partnered with Spark Policy Institute to conduct an evaluation of the BUILD Health Challenge. The evaluation aims to capture evidence of progress toward the mission of BUILD by assessing:

• The development of community partnerships.
• The strategies that prepare communities for long-term systems change around upstream health issues.
• The factors in BUILD communities that enable equitable conditions for health.

Equal Measure and Spark are also providing ongoing strategic support in conjunction with the evaluation.

The Results Thus Far

Now in the second cohort of BUILD grants, Equal Measure and Spark have collected data and evidence across nearly 40 communities and created two frameworks: Implementation Progress of the BUILD Principles, and Outcomes Framework. Both document what progress and success look like for BUILD communities and enhance the evidence base for the model. The Outcomes Framework also describes precursors to systems change to aid sites in marking their progress toward longer-term success.

The frameworks have been well received by the BUILD coalition and have been used to foster cross-team funder conversations, and to inform programmatic strategies.