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Creating a Collective Impact on Childhood Obesity | Evaluating Community Impact

Written by Sienna Jae Taylor | January 29, 2016

"Childhood obesity is a complex large-scale social problem caused by a multitude of interdependent factors. Children and families do not live and function in isolation but rather in the context of their family environments, neighbourhoods and communities." - Creating a collective impact on childhood obesity: Lessons from the SCOPE initiative 

Like childhood obesity, most social problems do not exist in silos. Social issues are created, and solved, by a number of interconnected systems. To determine if our systems are making a difference, we need to evaluate our efforts using shared measurements that are built into the initiatives from the beginning. 

How do we work collectively to evaluate our efforts?

Creating a collective impact on childhood obesity: Lessons from the SCOPE initiative is a great case study on how to engage multiple stakeholders to work on complex issues such as obesity. Researchers concluded that the Collective Impact framework provided a great platform for engagement, implementation of the initiative and evaluation to ensure impact. 

To learn more about using shared measurement and evaluation within the Collective Impact framework, check out the SCOPE initiative.

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