Background:
Community-based interventions can improve population health, however often the focus of evaluation is the impact of the strategies (i.e. the what), rather than also understanding implementation (i.e. the how). Norlane is a suburb in Geelong, Victoria, facing the highest level of socioeconomic disadvantage in the state. Norlane residents face issues such as food insecurity (with and without hunger) and social isolation; impacting overall health and wellbeing and increasing their risk chronic disease.
Norlane Community Initiatives is a community-led, place-making organisation taking a whole-of-neighbourhood and whole-of-person approach to create healthy, sustainable, inclusive and resilient neighbourhoods and affect real, generational change. Norlane Community Initiatives implements a suite of strategies to improve local access to healthy, affordable food and improve food literacy (e.g. social enterprise cafe, urban farm, community gardens, neighbourhood meals, food co-operatives, events). Scaling up the Norlane Community Initiatives approach could offer wide reaching benefits for other communities. However, first, an understanding of how these strategies work and the economic considerations for implementation is required. Therefore, this study aims to outline a protocol for evaluating this whole-of-neighbourhood approach.
Methods:
Equity underpins this mixed-methods research co-designed with Norlane Community Initiatives. A theory of change guides the work. The evaluation includes quantitative surveys, semi-structured interviews, facilitator and participant feedback forms, document analysis and economic data collection. Surveys and interviews have been designed by drawing on implementation science using the PRISM framework and Proctor’s 8 outcomes for implementation. Strategies will be examined for sustainability using PSAT tool and scalability using PRACTical planning for Implementation and Scale-up tool (PRACTIS) guide.
Discussion: Comprehensively understanding the multi-strategy Norlane Community Initiatives approach has the potential to support other local communities to improve population health in areas with high levels of disadvantage by understanding how they work (or not), lessons learnt, and economic considerations for implementation.