The People Make the Program: Evaluation of a Community-Engaged Teaching Initiative at a Graduate School of Public Health

Graduate public health (GPH) programs offer an opportunity to address persistent health inequities by advancing shared knowledge, fostering interdisciplinary solutions, and equipping the next generation of public health practitioners to address the root causes of disparities. Some GPH programs are exploring community-engaged teaching as a liberatory pedagogy approach that combines learning with community engagement. We implemented the CEnT Initiative, a liberatory pedagogy program that centers people with lived experience resisting systems of oppression in our GPH classrooms. We evaluated the CEnT Initiative following the CDC’s framework for program evaluation in public health. Our iterative evaluation involved multiple rounds of mixed methods data collection via online post-surveys with multiple-choice and open-ended questions sent to all program participants. We also implemented focus groups and interviews approximately halfway through our evaluation to explore lesser-known dimensions of the program. Quantitative data were analyzed after each semester using descriptive statistics. Qualitative data were analyzed using an iterative inductive coding process. Our evaluation revealed (1) high levels of satisfaction for all participant groups, (2) benefits varied for participant groups by CEnT Initiative component, but all participants experienced benefits, (3) the characteristics of participants and the CEnT Initiative team made the program successful, and (4) numerous opportunities for program growth. We will not realize the true liberatory benefits of the CEnT Initiative for years to come; however, modest institutional investment, compensation, and administrative infrastructure can create a profound impact on the academic experience and the reciprocity of academic-community partnerships.