As evaluators, we are never truly impartial. Our positionality — our identities, culture, and experiences — influences how we evaluate the merit, efficacy, and impact of public health interventions. It shapes the questions we ask, the types of information we consider valid, and how we interpret our findings.
As the protectors of the public’s health, it is critical that state and local public health agencies center equity in their evaluation efforts. Leading an equity-driven evaluation requires moving beyond harmful illusions of objectivity and confronting the assumptions we all bring to our work. Recognizing this allows us to take a more transformative approach to evaluation and learning — one that examines shifts in systems and power dynamics and values diverse perspectives.
As you plan to implement an evaluation, we offer three guiding questions that can help you determine how you will establish guiding values, prioritize co-creation with communities, and center lived experiences of participants early in the evaluation’s development.
1. What are the values that will guide the evaluation?
Our values reflect our priorities — they convey what we believe is important, and they serve as our north star for decision making. Taking time to build consensus around the values that will serve as the foundation of an evaluation is essential, especially if the evaluation works across sectors and involves multiple partners with different priorities and perspectives. Evaluators can facilitate the process of establishing guiding values and how those values will be used to help the group navigate complex decisions. Evaluators can ask collaborating partners: “How do we ensure our values show up in day-to-day decisions?” and “What accountability measures can we put in place?” Establishing values encourages honest reflection about power dynamics, identity, and if work is truly aligned with the goals of the people that programs are designed to serve. Evaluators can use the Equitable Evaluation Framework as a guide for engaging in this process and can revise values as the evaluation progresses.
After values are defined, developing an evaluation charter — a simple document that outlines team roles, meeting cadence, communication norms, and accountability measures — within the first six months of an evaluation can serve as a practical tool to support these efforts. These discussions and accountability documents can help foster transparency and ensure that commitments to centering equity in the evaluation are not just aspirational, but operational.
2. How do we prioritize co-creation throughout the evaluation?
Co-creation is an iterative and collaborative process in which evaluation participants are engaged as full partners in designing and making decisions for an evaluation. Co-creation prioritizes community perspectives, voices, and expertise. This approach ensures that participants have opportunities to make decisions that influence every phase of an evaluation, from data collection approaches to interpreting findings.
Authentically engaging in co-creation requires building trust between evaluators and participants. One specific way evaluators can accomplish this is by collaborating with participants to create data accountability agreements — commitments that govern how evaluation participants’ data will be collected, used, returned to them, and shared in ways that give credit and acknowledgement in ways they prefer. Prioritizing the development of these agreements early in the evaluation ensures that accountability is an ongoing conversation that is grounded in respect for participants as owners of their data.
Data accountability agreements emerge from ongoing, respectful dialogue and negotiation that should be taking place between evaluators and participants. These agreements should be treated as living commitments that can always be revisited and amended by evaluation participants. By being transparent about the inherent power dynamics involved in evaluation and honoring these agreements throughout the evaluation process, evaluators can shift power to participants in ways that are meaningful and mutually beneficial.
3. How do we ensure community histories and needs are centered throughout the evaluation?
Communities — the people and places that are simultaneously impacted by structural inequities and vital to transforming them — are the heart of any program and its evaluation. Public health interventions operate in the context of communities that have complex histories, existing relationships, and other longstanding efforts to address inequities. Understanding the historical, cultural, and geographical context in which an intervention is operating is essential to honor the expertise and leadership already present in communities. As evaluators, it is critical to take the time to do background research, map relationships, and to ask partners to share important facts, events, prior work, and experiences that characterize their community.
Engaging in ongoing conversations with participants allows the evaluation to be adaptable and center their needs and preferences in all activities. Establishing regular update meetings that accommodate participants’ schedules and ensuring that meeting agendas reflect their priorities can create helpful feedback loops that keep evaluation processes relevant, respectful, and inclusive.
Once the evaluation has begun, evaluators can also facilitate sensemaking workshops – collaborative and interactive sessions where participants can interpret evaluation findings and inform decision-making and learning. In these workshops, participants can reflect on findings, validate interpretations, and provide clarifications and context. As part of sensemaking sessions, evaluators can use data placemats and emergent learning tables — two facilitation tools that visually and thematically depict data. These tools can create a platform for participants to collectively reflect on their data, gain insights, and identify ways to translate findings into action. Sensemaking workshops also serve as another mechanism for infusing accountability into the evaluation process. They provide a space for evaluators to transparently ask if findings reflect participants’ experiences and share how and when findings will be shared back with participants.
Equity-driven evaluation cannot be treated like a checklist; it is an intentional, thoughtful, and ongoing approach to evaluation that requires understanding one’s positionality as an evaluator and using that knowledge to structure evaluations that are responsive to power dynamics and community needs. By establishing values, prioritizing co-creation, and centering communities, public health evaluators can ensure the evaluations they initiate have the potential to be credible, equitable, and impactful.
A version of this column first appeared in the September/October 2025 issue of the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice. See the final authenticated version.
