December 1, 2005 to December 31, 2008 Evaluation Report

Executive Summary

December 1, 2005 to December 31, 2008

The Essentials for Healthy Homes Practitioners (Essentials) is a two-day course that brings together professionals with a variety of perspectives and experiences. Course participants learn about the root causes of health problems in a home and the seven principles of healthy housing that can help to resolve them. This report summarizes the student evaluation results of Essentials courses delivered between December 1, 2005 and December 31, 2008.  It also summarizes student responses to the follow up survey that NCHH administers three to five months after a training.

Key Results

The Essentials course has been offered over 100 times since it was launched in June 2005 and NCHH has taught over 3,000 students through this course. The results of the course evaluations clearly show that the Essentials course is perceived as very valuable by students.

• 97% of students rated the course as excellent or good.

• 96% would recommend the course to a colleague. 

• 96% of the students said the training met the course objectives. 

• 81% of respondents said they could incorporate the concepts they learned into their daily work right away.

• 96% of respondents rated the clarity of presentations as excellent/good.

Over the course of approximately three years, the evaluation results showed consistent positive ratings for overall evaluation, willingness to recommend the course, the opinion that the training met course objectives, and clarity of presentations. The percent of students who said they could incorporate the concepts they learned into their daily work right away is lower than the other variables but has risen over the years.

As noted in the report, the evaluation form for the Essentials course includes questions targeted to students who perform home visits as part of their routine practices. These students are a key audience for the course because they have the opportunity to assess a home for hazards as well as educate residents about hazards and ways to address them. We found that:

• The majority of respondents were either very confident or mostly confident in educating residents or identifying problems related to the seven principles of a healthy home.

• 43% of the students were very confident in conducting visual assessments, and,

• 39% were very confident in educating residents on housing codes. 

The follow-up evaluation administered to students approximately three months after they take the training showed that:

• 79.5% of students discussed a healthy homes approach with people in their programs at work
• 51.8% used printed materials from the Essentials course
• 48.6% worked with people outside their programs to incorporate a healthy homes approach
• 39.5% sought to change their program protocols to include a healthy homes approach in daily practice
• 20.7% sought funding or modified their agency’s budget for healthy homes initiatives
• 5.5% worked to seek legislative change to permit a healthy homes approach

NCHH recognizes that certain barriers may prevent students from incorporating healthy homes information into their practices.  The follow-up evaluation showed that insufficient funding, lack of time, and no rules or codes to use are the top three barriers to students in integrating healthy homes information into their practices.

Since taking the class, students who do home visits reported in the follow-up evaluation that the top three problem areas they have addressed are mold, home cleanliness and cleaning methods, and lead poisoning hazards and prevention.  Actions most frequently taken by students included educating residents and identifying problems.  

Suggested Improvements

Based on the analysis, NCHH suggests a number of improvements to the course:

1.   The course should be reviewed to determine how to increase the percent of students who said they could incorporate the concepts they learned into their daily work right away.

2.   More attention should be paid to ensuring that students are more comfortable with educating residents on housing codes. Comfort with doing this has the lowest mean response among students who do home visits and educate residents on a variety of healthy homes topics.

3.   Data on student occupation needs to be collected more consistently and comprehensively. With that data, the report could have included additional analyses looking at results based on different occupations. Those additional analyses could have showed how different occupations have varying degrees of success and challenges in incorporating healthy homes into their work.

Conclusion

As one student noted, the best thing about the Essentials course is the opportunity to “bring people together to “connect the dots.”” This course does effectively bring together a variety of people from different health and housing backgrounds to look at healthy homes in a holistic manner. Revisions to the course are always useful as new research becomes available and new ways of conveying the healthy homes concepts are developed. NCHH will continue to provide the course as a critical resource in helping to fuel and shape the healthy homes movement.