CAI’s Evaluation and Research Department is supporting the City of Denver’s efforts to increase access to healthy food and food-based education for youth and families by evaluating and demonstrating outcomes of the Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids Initiative.
More than 12 percent of children under the age of 18 who live in Denver experience food insecurity, which can negatively affect their physical and mental health and academic achievement. In 2020, the City of Denver created the Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids Initiative to increase access to healthy food and food-based education and reduce overall food insecurity for youth and their families who live in the city.
The initiative
To understand the effectiveness of the Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids initiative and its outcomes, CAI is developing and leading a comprehensive, community-driven evaluation plan among the 44 community-based organizations and city agencies that receive grant funding from the city.
Over the next four years, CAI will undertake activities including the following:
- Convene stakeholders, including the Health Food for Denver’s Kids Commission, policy makers, agencies, and affected families to develop a comprehensive plan to measure the impact of the Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids initiative in reducing disparities in access to nutritious food in the city.
- Provide focused training and technical assistance in evaluation to help organizations that receive grant funding assess and improve their data and outcomes.
- Provide focused training and technical assistance in implementing evaluation techniques that involve community members and ensure that organizations’ programming reflects the voices and needs of the communities they serve.
- Build a robust database that gives grant-funded organizations, CAI, and Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids Commission members access to their own real-time, actionable data on the activities they are implementing, with the goal of improving their results and achieving project goals.
- Develop tools that facilitate sharing successes and lessons learned with the communities that agencies serve.
The impact
The evaluation of the Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids initiative will inform strategic planning, demonstrate accountability, and provide information about program effectiveness that will ultimately lead to improving children and families’ health and sustaining policy support for the initiative.
Project funder
Denver Department of Public Health & Environment
Leadership and contact
Lindsay Senter, Vice President of Research and Evaluation: healthykids-denver.contact@caiglobal.org.