| Course | HLTH 5043 Evaluation of Determinants of Health |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 5 |
| Paper type | Program evaluation plan |
| Length | 1,150 words, about 4 pages plus title and reference pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | American College of Education |
| Program | Master of Public Health |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for HLTH 5043 Module 5
Measuring Whether the Gap Narrows: An Evaluation Plan for a County Birth Equity Program Built on the 2024 CDC Framework and RE-AIM
Student Name
American College of Education
HLTH5043: Evaluation of Determinants of Health
Module 5 Assignment
Instructor Name
November 2, 2026
Purpose and Users
This plan evaluates the county's birth equity program for pregnant Black women on the east side, whose logic model was set out in the previous module. The evaluation has two purposes. The first is improvement: to learn during the first three years whether the program reaches the mothers at highest risk, whether it is delivered as designed and which components appear to work. The second is accountability: to tell the board of health, the state funder and the community whether the program is helping to narrow the county's racial gap in infant deaths.
The plan follows the six steps and three cross-cutting actions of the updated CDC framework (Kidder et al., 2024), with evaluation questions organized by the five RE-AIM dimensions (Glasgow et al., 1999). The primary users are the program's evaluation committee of mothers, doulas and hospital staff; the health department's leadership; and the funders.
Engaging the Community in Governance
Engagement is built into the evaluation's structure rather than added as consultation. The evaluation committee has eleven members, six of them east-side mothers who have given birth in the past three years, and it approves the evaluation questions, reviews the survey instruments, interprets findings before they are released and decides how results are shared with the community. Members are paid for their time. The committee also sets rules on data: individual-level results will never be shared outside the evaluation team, and findings about the east side will be presented in ways that do not stigmatize the neighborhood. Mothers on the committee are not an audience for the evaluation; they are among its authors.
Evaluation Questions by RE-AIM Dimension
Reach: What share of pregnant Black women on the east side enroll, and how do enrollees compare with all Black births in those tracts on age, insurance, first-trimester care and prior preterm birth? Effectiveness: Compared with similar mothers who do not enroll, do participants give birth early less often, have fewer small babies and fewer unnecessary cesareans, breastfeed more and put their infants to sleep more safely? Do perceived stress and experiences of discrimination in care decline during pregnancy? Adoption: What share of the hospital's obstetric clinicians refer to group prenatal care, and which community organizations refer to the doula program? Implementation: Do mothers receive the planned number of doula visits and group sessions, and are the postpartum visits completed within two weeks of birth? Maintenance: After three years, are staffing, referrals and funding stable, and do effects persist in later cohorts?
Design
A randomized design would be difficult to justify ethically and practically for a community program with strong support. The evaluation therefore uses two complementary designs. For effectiveness, each participant will be matched with up to three pregnant Black women from the county who did not enroll, on age, parity, insurance, gestational age at first prenatal visit, prior preterm birth and census tract characteristics, drawn from the state's matched records of births and infant deaths. Matching reduces, but cannot remove, differences in motivation and support. For population impact, the evaluation will track preterm birth, low birth weight and infant mortality among all Black births on the east side, in three-year rolling rates, against the trend in the five years before the program and against Black births in the rest of the county. If the program works and reaches enough mothers, east-side rates should improve faster than the comparison.
Measures and Data Sources
Birth outcomes come from linked vital records, which include gestational age, birth weight, method of delivery and infant death. Program records supply enrollment, visits and sessions. Participants will complete a short survey at enrollment, late pregnancy and six weeks after birth, including the Perceived Stress Scale, a widely used global measure of perceived stress developed by Cohen et al. (1983), and the Everyday Discrimination Scale, drawn from the work of Williams et al. (1997), adapted with a set of items about experiences in health care. The survey will also ask about infant sleep practices and breastfeeding. The committee will review all survey items for clarity and respect before use, and surveys will be available in English and Haitian Creole.
Analysis and Interpretation
Reach will be reported as the share of eligible births enrolled and as a comparison of enrollee and population characteristics, flagged if the program disproportionately enrolls lower-risk mothers. Effectiveness analyses will compare participants and matched non-participants using risk ratios and risk differences with confidence intervals. Changes in stress and discrimination scores will be reported with their variability. Implementation data will be linked to outcomes to see whether mothers receiving the full planned dose fare better, recognizing that such comparisons are vulnerable to self-selection. Population trends will be interpreted cautiously, since infant deaths are rare and three-year rates will change slowly. The committee will interpret all results before they are released, and conclusions will state how confident the team is and why.
Ethics, Privacy and Burden
An evaluation that asks women about stress and discrimination during pregnancy carries ethical responsibilities. The plan will be reviewed by the state health department's institutional review board. Participation in the surveys will be voluntary and separate from receiving program services, so no mother feels she must answer questions to get a doula or a crib. Consent forms will use short sentences and everyday words, and committee members will read them aloud with other mothers to check that they are clear before use. Survey responses will be stored without names, linked to vital records only through a coded identifier held by the state's data steward. Questions about discrimination can bring up painful experiences, so doulas will be trained to respond supportively and to offer referrals to counseling, and the survey will note that mothers may skip any question. The evaluation will also limit its own burden: surveys will take no more than fifteen minutes, will be offered at existing visits rather than extra appointments, and participants will receive a gift card for their time at each wave. An evaluation that exhausted or alienated the mothers it studies would undercut the trust the program depends on.
Reporting and Use
Results will be used, not only reported. The program team will review implementation and reach data monthly and adjust recruitment or staffing when targets are missed. The committee will issue a short community report each year in plain language, and the department will present results to the board of health and the state funder annually. At the end of year three, the evaluation will recommend whether to continue, expand, change or end each component. A component that shows strong implementation and reach but no effect on intermediate outcomes will be redesigned; one that cannot reach the highest-risk mothers will be rethought regardless of its effects on participants. The program will be judged by whether it helps close the gap.
References
Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24(4), 385-396. https://doi.org/10.2307/2136404
Glasgow, R. E., Vogt, T. M., & Boles, S. M. (1999). Evaluating the public health impact of health promotion interventions: The RE-AIM framework. American Journal of Public Health, 89(9), 1322-1327. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.89.9.1322
Kidder, D. P., Fierro, L. A., Luna, E., Salvaggio, H., McWhorter, A., Bowen, S.-A., Murphy-Hoefer, R., Thigpen, S., Alexander, D., Armstead, T. L., August, E., Bruce, D., Clarke, S. N., Davis, C., Downes, A., Gill, S., House, L. D., Kerzner, M., Kun, K., ... Young, K. (2024). CDC program evaluation framework, 2024. MMWR Recommendations and Reports, 73(6), 1-37. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.rr7306a1
Williams, D. R., Yu, Y., Jackson, J. S., & Anderson, N. B. (1997). Racial differences in physical and mental health: Socio-economic status, stress and discrimination. Journal of Health Psychology, 2(3), 335-351. https://doi.org/10.1177/135910539700200305
Reading the HLTH 5043 Module 5 instructions
HLTH 5043 Module 5 usually asks you to write a complete evaluation plan for a public health program, often the one you modeled in Module 4. Prompts typically ask for the evaluation's purpose and users, the questions it will answer, a design, indicators and data sources, data collection methods and instruments, an analysis plan, attention to ethics and equity, and a plan for reporting and using results. Many sections expect a named framework, such as the CDC framework or RE-AIM. Graders look for questions tied to the logic model and for measures and designs that could actually answer them. State the limits of your design plainly, and check Canvas for whether an evaluation matrix is required, since many sections want questions, indicators, sources and timing laid out in one table.
Inside the HLTH 5043 Module 5 example
The worked plan begins with two purposes, improvement and accountability, and names its primary users. It makes community engagement structural through a paid committee with defined decision rights. Questions are written for each RE-AIM dimension, with reach measured against the whole population at risk. Two designs are combined, a matched comparison for effectiveness and a trend comparison for population impact, and their limits are stated. Each outcome is linked to a data source, with validated instruments named and cited. Analyses are specified for each question, and the reporting plan sets audiences, timing and decision rules for each program component.
Where the points sit in the HLTH 5043 Module 5 rubric
Evaluation plan rubrics usually reward clear purposes and users, questions linked to the program's theory, an appropriate and honestly limited design, valid measures, a specified analysis and a plan for use. Graders check that each question has an indicator and a data source. Named, validated instruments earn more credit than invented surveys. The design criterion rewards acknowledging threats such as self-selection and explaining how the design addresses them. Equity is often a separate criterion, met by stratified measures, reach against the population at risk and community involvement. Decision rules for using results and APA 7 formatting complete the rubric, and a short budget for the evaluation itself often earns credit for feasibility.
Common HLTH 5043 Module 5 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Evaluation plans often lose marks by asking questions that no measure in the plan could answer, or by listing measures without data sources. Another frequent weakness is measuring only participants, which says nothing about the mothers the program never met or about the population rate it is meant to move. Students also promise a randomized trial that could never be run. Link every question to an indicator and a source. Compare enrollees with the whole target population. Use validated instruments. Say how results will change decisions. Plans for a diabetes prevention, tobacco or school wellness program follow the same pattern; outline your program and add the rubric, and we will build a Module 5 plan for it.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official American College of Education document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
More HLTH 5043 and Master of Public Health sample papers
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- HLTH 5043 Module 2: Determinants of Health Analysis
- HLTH 5043 Module 3: Evaluation Approach Comparison
- HLTH 5043 Module 4: Program Logic Model
- HLTH 5033 Module 5: Board Financial Report
- HLTH 5003 Module 2: Culture and Cultural Competency
- HLTH 5013 Module 2: Study Design Comparison
- HLTH 5083 Module 3: Capstone Options Analysis
HLTH 5043 Module 5 questions, answered
What does HLTH5043 Module 5 usually ask for?
HLTH5043 frequently ends with a full evaluation plan for a public health program: purposes, questions, design, measures, data sources, analysis and how results will be reported and used. In most sections you evaluate the program you have developed in the earlier modules.
How do you evaluate a program that aims to reduce a disparity?
Measure reach against the whole population at risk, compare outcomes with a similar group, track population trends for the disadvantaged group, and report every measure by the groups the program aims to help.
What measures can capture stress and discrimination?
Validated instruments such as the Perceived Stress Scale and the Everyday Discrimination Scale are commonly used, often adapted with items about specific settings such as health care.
Where can I find a free HLTH 5043 Module 5 sample paper?
You will find the complete Module 5 evaluation plan here, for a county birth equity program, with a community-led committee, RE-AIM questions, a matched and trend design, validated measures and a reporting plan.
Why not use a randomized design for a community program?
Randomizing families away from a program with strong community support can be ethically and practically difficult, so matched comparisons and trend analyses are often used instead, with their limits acknowledged.