Formative Evaluation of a City-Wide Hospital-Based Victims Services Intervention in Chicago

This project will support the conduct of a formative evaluation and evaluability assessment of the Chicago Hospital Working Group’s (C-HWG) violence trauma centers. The C-HWG was established as a city-wide group of hospitals to coordinate their respective violence intervention programs, and to ensure that every patient with a violent injury has the best possible opportunity to avoid re-injury and further violence upon release. The C-HWG supports the efforts of six trauma centers to 1) Build, share, and deepen best practices in hospital-based violence intervention initiatives; and 2) Establish and sustain an aligned system of care across the city.

The National Opinion Research Center will undertake an evaluability assessment and formative evaluation to guide program design and data collection efforts across the group. There is little standardization in models of hospital-based violence intervention, and data on the relative effects of alternative approaches are lacking. For this project, researchers from NORC will collaborate with the C-HWG to inform the development of an aligned approach to intervention services to prepare them for a future rigorous evaluation of their collective efforts. This project will coordinate communication and program development efforts across the hospitals, document the characteristics of the victims served and the specific services provided, develop measures to assess intervention outcomes, and identify barriers to program success and strategies to mitigate those barriers. These activities will culminate in the development of a central program logic model, an HVIP program implementation guide, fidelity tools for programs to self-assess their own program activities, and a design report for a future individual program or cross-site evaluation.

"Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law," and complies with Part 200 Uniform Requirements - 2 CFR 200.210(a)(14). CA/NCF