Center for Healthy Aging

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Sustainability

Sustainability ensures that you can continue to offer your valuable programming.  Like evaluation, sustainability should be a part of each step of your process.  The prospects for sustainability are improved through careful attention to all of the other elements of offering evidence-based programs: planning, implementation, outreach and recruitment, and evaluation.

The Center for Healthy Aging offers online learning modules covering two important aspects of sustainability- business planning and quality assurance. 

Creating a Business Plan for Evidence-Based Health Promotion Programs

This module will teach you how to write a business plan for an evidence-based health promotion program.  Content areas include ways to use a business plan, key questions to consider, typical components to include, common pitfalls to avoid, how to package your plan, and helpful online resources. Take the training now.

Assuring Program Quality

This module will introduce you to planning a quality assurance system for your evidence-based health promotion programs and to using the RE-AIM framework to help guide your thinking.  In the module you will learn about a sustainable evidence-based prevention program delivery system that includes quality assurance, definitions for quality assurance, continuous quality improvement and fidelity, components and processes of an ideal quality assurance plan, how to use the RE-AIM framework as a guide for specifying your quality assurance performance indicators, and examples and resources for creating or improving your quality assurance plan.  Take the training now.

Additional Resources

Please explore the materials listed below or the comprehensive selection of tools and resources in our searchable library.

• Financial Sustainability for Evidence-Based Programs
  This document highlights some of the findings from a recent survey of people who are currently implementing, or have had experience working with, evidence-based healthy aging programs. In it, you will find some key ideas and tips for states and their partners to consider, many of which may help increase the likelihood of financial sustainability for evidence-based programs.
• Is Sustainability Possible?
  This article reviews the sustainability of 19 health-related programs.  Measures of sustainability included: continued program activities, continued measured benefits, and maintained community capacity.  Five factors were found to influence the extent of sustainability: a program can be modified over time, a champion is present, the program fits with its organization's missions and procedures, benefits to staff members are and/or clients are readily perceived, and stakeholders in other organizations provide support.
• Recommendations for Quality Assurance Programs
  To assist you with establishing or strengthening your QA plan, this document highlights and describes various components of a quality assurance plan. Developed with input from several state grantees, it provides suggested recommendations for QA programs, drawing upon both the literature and current practices in the field.
• Quality Assurance Planning Template
  This template integrates quality assurance elements into a single planning document. Using the RE-AIM framework as a guide, it provides specific indicators and suggested action steps for developing a structured and robust quality assurance plan.

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