Is Colorado Ready to Talk About the Role of Racism in Health Equity?

Is Colorado ready to talk about the role of racism in health equity? This is one of the questions grantees raised and discussed at the end of the 2015 Health Equity Learning Series (HELS). To better understand the answer, and explore perceptions of racism and its role in preventing health equity in their communities, the 22 Colorado Trust grantees were interviewed by project evaluator Melanie Tran of the University of Colorado Denver

New Graduate RN Transition Program Evaluation and Replication

Evaluates the impact of pilot programs to improve new nurses' self-confidence, competencies in acute and non-acute specialties and advanced generalist skills, and employment outcomes. Includes best practices and recommendations for future programs

Using Evaluation to Improve Grantmaking: What's Good for the Goose is Good for the Grantor

Over the past decade, evaluation has become an increasingly prominent (albeit vexing) function within philanthropy. More and more foundations are beginning to devote at least minimal levels of resources to evaluate the programs they fund. The topic of evaluation appears more and more at professional conferences. Membership in Grantmakers Evaluation Network -- an "affinity group" of foundation representatives interested in promoting evaluation -- has mushroomed to over 400. As the "demand" for evaluation has increased among foundations, the market has begun to fill up with a mixed bag of consultants (from both academia and the private sector) willing to supply their services. Particularly this last indicator suggests that evaluation will take root in the philanthropic sector. Yet, although evaluation is becoming a more popular activity among foundations, its potential is far from being realized

Impact of the Health Equity Learning Series in Seven Colorado Communities: 2013 - 2015

In 2013, The Colorado Trust began funding the Health Equity Learning Series (HELS). The purpose of HELS was to increase knowledge and awareness of the social determinants of health (SDOH) in Colorado. A series of speakers annually spoke in Denver, primarily to the local nonprofit community. At the same time, grants were awarded to nonprofit organizations in 65 communities around the state to host "viewing parties," giving others outside of Denver the opportunity to hear the speaker and have a discussion. Among the 65 organizations over the course of three years, seven were awarded grants all three years, thereby hosting community events for approximately 12 speakers. This report is based on qualitative interviews conducted with these seven grantees. The purpose of the interviews was to understand how these organizations and communities applied lessons from HELS speakers to their daily work, how HELS impacted their efforts and how they were able to implement informed action as a result.

The Journey Continues: Ensuring a Cross-Culturally Competent Evaluation

Follows up the 2007 report The Importance of Culture in Evaluation with scenarios of how cross-cultural issues emerge and expert commentary on how to address them. Highlights evaluators' roles in promoting social equity and other considerations

Disrupting a Foundation to Put Communities First in Colorado Philanthropy

This article explores how The Colorado Trust confronted the fact that the lives of many Coloradans remained fundamentally unchanged after years of nonprofit-led grantmaking and, in response, developed a community-led grantmaking process aimed at achieving a new vision of health equity. These shifts led to significant changes both within The Trust and in long-standing relationships with many nonprofits. The Trust dissolved its program department and replaced the program officer position with a team of “community partners” tasked with building relationships with residents in far-flung regions of the state. Resident groups were empowered to identify the needs in their own communities, and will receive funding to disperse as they saw fit to implement their plans to address those needs. These residents are also discussing what success will look like for them and how they will know when they achieve it — in evaluation, too, shifting power from the funder to the community. Putting Colorado residents in the driver’s seat for part of its grantmaking altered the fulcrum of power at The Trust. This article also discusses how The Trust came to examine its own power and privilege and to explore diversity, equity, and inclusion — what it means to The Trust and how it can best be prepared for deeper community conversations

Looking in the Mirror: Equity in Practice for Philanthropy

Philanthropy still needs to be reminded that there is no such thing as a post-racial America, and that systemic racism continues to underlie the problems foundation funding attempts to address. While many foundations have found it challenging to address equity in their grantmaking, they have found that process far more comfortable than addressing equity within their own organizations. This article will describe the efforts of three foundations in various stages of seeing themselves through an equity lens: the Consumer Health Foundation, The Colorado Trust, and Interact for Health. This article will discuss why these foundations are on this journey, what they expect to achieve, what hurdles they have encountered, and how those hurdles were — or were not — overcome. •• It is impossible for a foundation to effectively fund with an equity lens unless it commits to doing the necessary internal work around the same issue, and embarks on its own journey toward equity

Colour Appearance of Metameric Lights and Possible Colorimetric Description

Based on earlier experiences of the colour mismatch phenomenon we investigated the colour matching with two types of visual experiments. First we confirmed the phenomenon with a white colour matching experiment using narrow band and broadband light sources illuminating white reflection patches. Secondly we made a colour matching experiment with more saturated colour stimuli. During both experiments the observers had the task to set the colour stimuli coming from the test side to that coming from the reference side of the arrangement. Using spectroradiometric measurement data we calculated chromaticities using the CIE standard colour matching functions and using a slightly modified set of CMFs kindly received from Dr. Wold. The calulations showed that using the modified colour matching functions the calculated colour differences will be smaller. This result is true in both matching situations. After the second series we came to the conclusion that the value of calculated colour difference is the function of the blue amount in the radiation

Where to put things? Spatial land management to sustain biodiversity and economic returns

Expanding human population and economic growth have led to large-scale conversion of natural habitat to human-dominated landscapes with consequent large-scale declines in biodiversity. Conserving biodiversity, while at the same time meeting expanding human needs, is an issue of utmost importance. In this paper we develop a spatially explicit landscape-level model for analyzing the biological and economic consequences of alternative land-use patterns. The spatially explicit biological model incorporates habitat preferences, area requirements and dispersal ability between habitat patches for terrestrial vertebrate species to predict the likely number of species that will be sustained on the landscape. The spatially explicit economic model incorporates site characteristics and location to predict economic returns for a variety of potential land uses. We apply the model to search for efficient land-use patterns that maximize biodiversity conservation objectives for given levels of economic returns, and vice versa. We apply the model to the Willamette Basin, Oregon, USA. By thinking carefully about the arrangement of activities, we find land-use patterns that sustain high levels of biodiversity and economic returns. Compared to the 1990 land-use pattern, we show that both biodiversity conservation and the value of economic activity could be increased substantially. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd

Skeletal pathology and variable anatomy in elephant feet assessed using computed tomography

Foot problems are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in elephants, but are underreported due to difficulties in diagnosis, particularly of conditions affecting the bones and internal structures. Here we evaluate post-mortem computer tomographic (CT) scans of 52 feet from 21 elephants (seven African Loxodonta africana and 14 Asian Elephas maximus), describing both pathology and variant anatomy (including the appearance of phalangeal and sesamoid bones) that could be mistaken for disease. We found all the elephants in our study to have pathology of some type in at least one foot. The most common pathological changes observed were bone remodelling, enthesopathy, osseous cyst-like lesions, and osteoarthritis, with soft tissue mineralisation, osteitis, infectious osteoarthriti, subluxation, fracture and enostoses observed less frequently. Most feet had multiple categories of pathological change (81% with two or more diagnoses, versus 10% with a single diagnosis, and 9% without significant pathology). Much of the pathological change was focused over the middle/lateral digits, which bear most weight and experience high peak pressures during walking. We found remodelling and osteoarthritis to be correlated with increasing age, more enthesopathy in Asian elephants, and more cyst-like lesions in females. We also observed multipartite, missing and misshapen phalanges as common and apparently incidental findings. The proximal (paired) sesamoids can appear fused or absent, and the predigits (radial/tibial sesamoids) can be variably ossified, though are significantly more ossified in Asian elephants. Our study reinforces the need for regular examination and radiography of elephant feet to monitor for pathology and as a tool for improving welfare