Funder: St. Louis County Department of Health
Staff Contact: Sarah Moreland-Russell
Project Duration: 2010—2012
As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has provided funding to support the Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) Initiative. This initiative supports community public health efforts to improve nutrition, increase physical activity, reduce obesity, and decrease tobacco use—four critical actions to combat chronic disease and promote health. The St. Louis County Department of Health (DOH) received one of 50 CPPW grants, and from 2010-2012, the DOH has been implementing policy and systems interventions to reduce tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure, increase awareness of cessation services, and prevent youth smoking initiation. The DOH’s intervention efforts focus on the following objectives:
- Developing a hard-hitting counter marketing media campaign;
- Strengthening the St. Louis County smoke free ordinance;
- Increasing the number of St. Louis County municipalities with strong smoke free policies;
- Increasing the proportion of public school districts, private schools, and higher education institutions with comprehensive tobacco free policies;
- Augmenting the current required signage restricting sales to minors to include a graphic warning designed to discourage tobacco use;
- Increasing the number of St. Louis County retail stores compliant with existing FDA and County regulations;
- Increasing the use of the Missouri Quitline by St. Louis County residents; and
- Increasing the proportion of St. Louis County employers that provide cessation services.
In collaboration with a team from the Saint Louis University School of Public Health, CPHSS serves as the main evaluator of the St. Louis County CPPW project. A comprehensive evaluation plan has been developed to examine both process and outcome measures for the CPPW grant. The evaluation is multimodal; both quantitative and qualitative data will be collected to assess changes in individuals, organizations, and the community environment. Specifically, we will evaluate change across four main domains:
- Policy Change
- Systems Change
- Environmental Change
- Behavioral and Social Norm Change
As part of the evaluation, the strength, contribution, and expansion of the St. Louis County Tobacco Control Network over the course of the CPPW project will also be examined using data collected from a social network analysis survey and key informant interviews.
Because the evaluation team has a core philosophy that dissemination is a critical aspect of program evaluation, the team regularly shares key evaluation results with the St. Louis County DOH and other partners in the form of evaluation reports.
See all CPPW evaluation products