Founded and directed by Dr. Patricia Miranda-Hartsuff in 2020, the Hub for Evaluation and Learning (HEAL) Detroit believes that to reach transformational change, we must build professional competency in our communities. HEAL Detroit believes we should offer not just a mechanism for hearing previously silenced voices, but instruments for credentialing communities to define their own metrics, craft appropriately tailored evidence-based interventions, design evaluation processes that are grounded and granular enough to detect change, and provide the development and grant-seeking support to sponsor their activities. The health of Detroiters has been marked by health disparities across racial and ethnic groups for decades. While the causes are complex, the role of systemic racism has finally been pulled out of the shadows. As communities work to recover from the pandemic, it’s our imperative to help them rebuild in an efficient, impact-focused manner. HEAL Detroit will serve as a nucleus for matching evidence-based solutions with community-engaged approaches to address social determinants of health through increasing community capacity and applied learning opportunities for Wayne State students and the larger community. By identifying and engaging community partners and the organizations that seek to serve them, HEAL Detroit will apply a systems change strategy to bring about structural, relational and transformative change using a racial equity lens – and ultimately, in so doing, shift power and resources back to local communities who have struggled with high rates of unemployment and widely disseminated opportunities for workforce development.
Faculty affiliated with HEAL Detroit (“academic ambassadors“) provide mission-critical consultation with local community-based and -serving organizations, identifying metrics that support program development, monitoring and evaluation that promote accountability, sustainability, and collective impact, and inform curriculum content for training modules within their content areas of expertise.
In an under-resourced environment, every dollar must count. It’s our responsibility to be true academic stewards to our neighbors and families through facilitating our community-based and community-serving organizations’ understanding of the utility of including evidence-based metrics in their practice, providing a pathway to sustainability, and technical assistance and services for future analytics and data monitoring, policy analysis, and knowledge product generation. We should offer not just a mechanism for hearing previously silenced voices, but instruments for credentialing communities to define their own metrics, craft appropriately tailored interventions, design evaluation processes that are grounded and granular enough to detect change, and provide the development and grant-seeking support to sponsor their activities.
In partnership, HEAL Detroit will increase the community engagement impact of Wayne State scholars through the dissemination of evidence-based practices that are already strongly linked with community stakeholders, and integrate practice-based evidence derived from local community and traditions. After successful demonstration, we anticipate being able to package HEAL Detroit for national dissemination and replication (i.e. HEAL St. Louis, HEAL Chicago), securing the sustainability of our practices, and securing Wayne State’s recognition as a leader in community-driven approaches that make sustainable, evidence-based interventions and services culturally relevant are essential to address poverty, increase access to healthcare, and revitalize spaces through communities who are empowered and professionalized to recreate and implement measurable programs.
