Abstract P198: Developing a Practical, Evidence-Based Framework for Evaluating Community Nutrition Security Interventions

Introduction: Addressing nutrition insecurity at a population level is complex and requires changing policies, systems, and environments. The American Heart Association (AHA) has identified 17 research informed systemic interventions that have the potential to increase nutrition security over time. These interventions can be leveraged individually or together based on community needs and assets. Evaluating these interventions is essential for understanding impact, improving implementation, and allocating resources to effective strategies. This project sought to establish a pragmatic yet rigorous framework for evaluating the health impact of these strategies in communities across the United States. Hypothesis: We assessed the hypothesis that we could evaluate community nutrition security interventions by using program records, secondary data sources, and judicious use of primary data collection. Methods: Researchers reviewed details from the AHA's community impact database detailing 188 research informed nutrition security projects in communities across 29 states and the District of Columbia. Impacts were assessed for reach of intervention and strength of evidence to determine relative population dose of interventions. Seven interventions were determined to be ‘high dose,’ and researchers identified community and proximal outcomes for three high-dose interventions where the AHA is typically the catalyst that is leading and influencing work with community partners. Researchers reviewed 11 national databases to identify existing community-level data aggregated at the county, city, zip code, or census track that may be associated with the three high dose impact opportunities. Researchers then reviewed the evidence-based literature associated with proximal outcomes - organizational, environmental, policy, or individual/household changes - that have been documented in research studies in association with the three high dose interventions. Using the insight from both reviews, researchers were able to develop a model evaluation framework for assessing the impact of community level interventions over time. Results: Researchers were able to identify 17 proximal outcomes and two community level outcomes with evidence associated with the three high dose interventions. Conclusion: Demonstrating the impact of community level nutrition security interventions is challenging given the complexity of the environments in which they are implemented and the limitations of evaluation resources. This approach prioritizes high dose evidence-based interventions and then leverages existing community level datasets and organizational measures to assess impact. It provides a framework for other organizations to prioritize specific systemic interventions to evaluate and further informs the evidence base for future interventions.