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HOPES publishes evaluation of COVID-19 vaccination campaign
AltaMed Health Services, in partnership with other federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and community-based organizations, led a yearlong COVID-19 vaccination campaign, ¡Andale! ¿Que Esperas? (AQE), aiming to increase vaccine access and confidence in Latinx communities across California. This $11 million campaign was funded by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Expanding the community health worker (CHW) workforce was a critical objective of AQE, and Center for HOPES evaluators Saira Nawaz, Anne Trinh, Kyle Moon, and Jasmin Navarrete recently published their mixed-methods evaluation of AQE in Journal of Community Health. Their evaluation identifies the importance, needs, and perils of CHW models in the COVID-19 era and beyond. You can read the article here.
Center evaluators hold community training
From Wednesday, September 28 to Friday, September 30, the Center for HOPES’ Director of Health Services Research, Dr. Saira Nawaz and Evaluator and Community Engagement Specialist, Anne Trinh conducted an evaluation training for the Center for Public Health Innovation at Columbus Public Health and their community partners. Read more
Nawaz and Moon present at ARM 2022
Center for HOPES Research Evaluator Saira Nawaz and Research Associate Kyle Moon presented at this year’s AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting in Washington, D.C. Nawaz participated in an all-star panel on measuring racism in health research and Moon presented a poster on the evaluation team’s work with community health workers. Read more
Center for HOPES Releases 2021 Annual Report
It was another busy year for Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Evaluation Studies! Building on 2020’s strong staffing and project expansions, we focused our attention on deepening our community engagement efforts in 2021. Guided by our mission to support community health, we’re proud to report another impactful year of advancing the university’s land grant mission through innovative evaluation, policy, and outcomes research for the public good.
Read about our new projects and continuing efforts in the Center for HOPES 2021 Annual Report.
Support our work by donating to the Center for HOPES Support Fund.
Figueroa invited to join SGM research consortium
Center for HOPES Research Scholar Wilson Figueroa has been invited to join the Midwest SGM (Sexual and Gender Minorities) Health Research Consortium. The Consortium is a collaborative group of university researchers and community partners focused on identifying, understanding, and addressing the health needs of diverse SGM individuals through transdisciplinary and community-engaged research. Per the group’s website, “[a] major focus of the Consortium is to study the structural, social, and psychological determinants of health disparities for SGM communities and to design and implement evidence-informed and evidence-based interventions to reduce health disparities.” Dr. Figueroa shares these goals. Read more about how the RISE Study examines discrimination as a determinant of health.
Seiber receives prestigious teaching award
Congratulations to Center for HOPES Director Eric Seiber for being awarded the university’s Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching. The university recognizes up to 10 faculty per year for their teaching excellence. Dr. Seiber’s former doctoral student and Center researcher Evan Goldstein, now an assistant professor at the University of Utah, nominated him for this prestigious honor. Read more
Other work from Center for HOPES researcher
Center for HOPES Research Scholar Wilson Figueroa is co-author of an article in the new issue of Cancer Medicine. College of Public Health colleague Tasleem Padamsee, and their co-authors compare three different breast cancer risk prediction models among a community-based sample to identify women who have a high risk of getting breast cancer. Read more
Partnership with City of Columbus, Center for Public Health Innovation
The Center for HOPES is partnering with the City of Columbus, Center for Public Health Innovation (CPHI) to address COVID-19 health disparities in Franklin County, Ohio. This work is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Initiative to Address COVID-19 Health Disparities Among Populations at High-Risk and Underserved, Including Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations and Rural Communities. Over the next two years, Saira Nawaz and Anne Trinh, evaluators and community engagement specialists at the Center for HOPES, will work with CPHI and other collaborators, including the Kirwan Institute and community-based organizations serving racial/ethnic minority groups, to support COVID-19 recovery efforts and build sustainable practices to improve community health. Read more.
Blog: Evaluation’s role in community engagement & empowerment
Center for HOPES evaluators Saira Nawaz and Anne Trinh recently returned from the west coast on a site visit to AltaMed’s vaccination outreach program. The aim of the program is to increase COVID-19 vaccinations among the Latinx community in southern California by bolstering a community-based workforce of outreach and health workers.

Visiting San Ysidro Health Center’s mobile health clinic
This work is funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and led by AltaMed, the nation’s largest federally qualified health center. The Center for HOPES’s charge is to evaluate the program’s effectiveness at increasing vaccinations in the target communities. The site visit was written into our scope of work specifically to ensure that sites are collecting data required for the funder as well as information that is useful to AltaMed and its partner organizations in serving their communities.
Read more about how program evaluation is an opportunity to build relationships and bridge research and practice. Want to expand your own evaluation expertise? Enroll in our Evaluation Certificate Program!
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The Center for HOPES is a research center in The Ohio State University College of Public Health. HOPES provides health economics, health policy, and evaluation services for projects within the university, as well as for government agencies, community groups, and private sector organizations. In addition to the Center’s accomplished researchers, HOPES provides a platform for the research community to collaborate across colleges in order to better understand the issues facing the public’s health today.