CoPEH Canada Research and Evaluation Program

"Conduct an integrated program of participatory research and evaluation to examine the networking, educational and capacity building outcomes of the community of practice."
-- One of the five CoPEH-Canada objectives

This page presents the main aspects of the CoPEH-Canada research and evaluation program, its proposed calendar as well as all available “outputs” from the research.  
We invite you to communicate with the research team regarding any queries you might have about this program. You can reach us at copeh-can@uqam.ca. The research and evaluation program of the Canadian Community of Practice in Ecosystem Approaches to Health has received a Certificate of Approval from the University of British Columbia Behavioural Research Ethics Board (UBC BREB Number H07-02815, dating from January 2009).

Objectives of the Research and Evaluation Program

The CoPEH-Canada has prioritised an action-oriented research portfolio with an explicit commitment to learning through ongoing assessment, evaluation and feedback throughout the development of the project. This participatory and interdisciplinary research is an integral contribution to the COPEH-Canada’s 2008-2010 mandate to establish an ongoing community of practice and ecohealth training and awards program.
To optimise the scholarly contribution of the CoPEH-Canada, the research will focus on the interrelated themes of collaborative relationships and capacity building, and their contributions to the emerging field of ecohealth. Four linked research questions will guide the study of these themes in the context of the CoPEH-Canada:

• how will the network of relationships in the community of practice grow and develop throughout the project, in terms of contact, collaboration, diversity and communication (collaborative relationships)?
• what principles and processes will be prioritised for the collective design, implementation and   evaluation of the ecohealth short-course and CoPEH-Canada activities (capacity building) ?
• how will the  ecohealth short course  and CoPEH-Canada activities contribute to the network of collaborative relationships (& vice versa)?
• how will the combination of collaborative relationships and capacity building in the CoPEH-Canada influence research, education and practice in ecosystem approaches to health?

The following figure illustrates the integration of the research themes and questions.

The Capacity Building aspect of the research / evaluation process aims to:

• Establish an ongoing ‘participatory research community’ focused on knowledge translation through curriculum development.
• Conduct an environmental scan of content and evaluation of previous and existing ecohealth training resources - drawing in particular on the documentation and experiences from Consortium and CoPEH partners (including previous IDRC ecohealth programs) and, where possible, experience from international communities of practice in ecohealth.
• Design a quantitative and qualitative tool for feedback (including assessment, evaluation and reflection) on the short, medium and long-term influence of the proposed ecohealth program for CoPEH-Canada participants (team, students and working groups).
• Identify strategies to adapt the ecohealth curriculum and programming to other settings (in Canada and elsewhere).

The Collaborative Relationships aspect of the research and evaluation process aims to evaluate and understand the growth of the community of practice and to evaluate it's resilience, by:

• measuring and evaluating the augmentation of exchanges between all participants of CoPEH Can; the development of communication within and between regional nodes; and the change in the diversity of the participants in terms of their roles (investigators, policy makers, participants of civil associations), their institutional attachment, their gender, their status and their disciplines of training and of actual practice.
• understanding the conditions contributing to CoPEH Can successes; the needs of the participants; strength, complementarities, and differences across the community of practice.
• providing feedback to the participants of the community and, potentially, other communities of practice and interested colleagues.

Calendar of research and evaluation activity

On-going throughout the three years:

• Environmental scan of content and evaluation of previous and existing ecohealth training resources.
• Gathering of data from team and workgroup meetings and collecting of all the activities realised by the CoPEH-Can.

In 2008

Short-term feedback on 2008 Ecohealth Short Course.
Coming Soon:

• Click here to see the survey.
• Click here to download the summary of the findings.
• Click here to download a more detailed analysis of the findings.

In 2009

Network survey and follow-up questions to participants in the 2008 course and to members of nodal working groups.
Coming Soon:

• Click here to see the survey
• Click here to see the interview guide for in-depth interviews
• Short term feedback on 2009 Ecohealth Short Course.