Process & outcome evaluation of a rural health network to assess effectiveness

Process & outcome evaluation of a rural health network to assess effectiveness
Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice; by Sarah Mollman, Kelly Boyd, Charlene Berke, Mari Perrenoud, Vonda Reed, Carol Stewart; 8/19/25
Background: Rural residents face many health disparities and challenges. Rural health networks form to address the specific needs of a community by bringing together multiple individuals and organisations; however, there is limited literature on the evaluation of these networks.
Objective: To evaluate a network's effectiveness in three areas: (1) capacity to achieve change in palliative care education, (2) key results of collaborative efforts, and (3) extent to which grant activities were implemented.
Results: The network was proficient or excelling in all 15 areas of a Network Organisational Assessment and represented all 38 key sectors representing the focus of network (palliative care).