Evaluating Research Centers in Minority Institutions: Framework, Metrics, Best Practices, and Challenges

The NIH-funded Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) program is currently funding 18 academic institutions to strengthen the research environment and contribution to health disparities research. The purpose of this multiphase mixed-methods study was to establish a uniform evaluation frame...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	International journal of environmental research and public health Vol. 17; no. 22; p. 8373
Main Authors:	Sy, Angela, Hayes, Traci, Laurila, Kelly, Noboa, Carlamarie, Langwerden, Robbert J, Hospital, Michelle M, Andújar-Pérez, Doris A, Stevenson, Lakesha, Cunningham, Suzanne M Randolph, Rollins, Latrice, Madanat, Hala, Penn, Tanya, Mehravaran, Shiva
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Switzerland MDPI AG 12-11-2020 MDPI
Subjects:	Academies and Institutes - organization & administration Academies and Institutes - standards Benchmarking Best practice Collaboration Community Consortia Data collection Decision making Evaluation Evaluation Studies as Topic Health disparities Humans Infrastructure Institutions Leadership Literature reviews Medical research Minority & ethnic groups Minority Groups Polls & surveys Productivity Research centers Research facilities Strategic planning Universities - organization & administration Universities - standards Universities - statistics & numerical data Workshops evaluation metrics health disparities program evaluation collaboration RCMI consortium-wide evaluation evaluation framework
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Summary:	The NIH-funded Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) program is currently funding 18 academic institutions to strengthen the research environment and contribution to health disparities research. The purpose of this multiphase mixed-methods study was to establish a uniform evaluation framework for demonstrating the collective success of this research consortium. Methods included discussions of aims and logic models at the RCMI Evaluators' Workshop, a literature review to inform an evaluation conceptual framework, and a case study survey to obtain evaluation-related information and metrics. Ten RCMIs participated in the workshop and 14 submitted responses to the survey. The resultant RCMI Evaluation Conceptual Model presents a practical ongoing approach to document RCMIs' impacts on health disparities. Survey results identified 37 common metrics under four primary categories. Evaluation challenges were issues related to limited human resources, data collection, decision-making, defining metrics, cost-sharing, and revenue-generation. There is a need for further collaborative efforts across RCMI sites to engage program leadership and community stakeholders in addressing the identified evaluation challenges and measurement. Program leadership should be engaged to apply the Evaluation Conceptual Framework and common metrics to allow for valid inter-institutional comparisons and consortium-wide evaluations. Stakeholders could ensure evaluation metrics are used to facilitate community impacts.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	1660-4601 1661-7827 1660-4601
DOI:	10.3390/ijerph17228373