Reed K, Carr T, Rabbani R, Chandler C, Scaccia J, Cook B, Howard P, Ramaswamy R. Blending participatory action synthesis and meta-ethnography: An innovative approach to evaluating complex community health transformation. Journal of Participatory Research Methods. 2021 Nov;2(3).

Evaluation methods to gain knowledge from community health improvement efforts that is generalizable across settings are often limited by available data and the need for deep contextual knowledge. This article describes an innovative participatory approach to evaluation of a community transformation initiative, the 100 Million Healthier Lives SCALE (Spreading Community Accelerators through Learning and Evaluation) initiative, that involved up to 18 communities across the US. The approach blends two qualitative research synthesis methods: participatory action synthesis and meta-ethnography and applies them to the pragmatic evaluation of a program in real-life settings.

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