Lessons learned - What these seven studies teach us

Seven evaluation studies of American Cancer Society programs offer findings useful for improving the programs studied and have larger implications for public:health initiatives that rely on volunteers, the training of trainer s, professional referral agents, and outreach through faith organizations o r other indigenous community groups, Studies documented the following for e xample: higher levels of productivity among volunteers who are cancer survi vors, hare health-related backgrounds, have college, degrees, or both; the value of wing existing organizations,to recruit volunteers; the need for im proved selection methods to reduce attrition in programs using: "train the trainer'' models; and the outreach potential of faith organizations;as node s in social networks: within communities. The studies demonstrate to all vo luntary health organizations the importance of assembling an accurate datab ase to describe their activities and to enable them to answer important man agement questions;, Lessons from these statistics also can contribute to th e det elopment of better methods for the study of public health programs an d for the incorporation of evaluation into the process of continuous progra m Improvement within voluntary health of organizations.