Driving Social Impact with Common Global Indicators for Healthy Lifestyle Programs: Lessons Learned

Abstract

Background Partnerships between corporate entities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in delivering community focused health and well-being programs are becoming increasingly valuable especially in the context of promoting healthy lifestyles around the globe. The Mondelēz International Foundation (MIF) has funded healthy lifestyles community based programs targeting children and youth through partnership with seven global NGOs. To assess collective impact of these programs, it is crucial to identify best practices and common impact indicators that can be measured across programs. MIF therefore organized the Healthy Life-styles Evaluation Workshop to explore these pertinent questions. Objective Share best practices and identify common impact indicators to measure the success of current and future MIF funded healthy lifestyles programs. Methods Analysis of the Program Impact Pathways (PIPs) and measured output of each of the seven programs. Results Individual and combined analysis of PIPs of the seven NGO programs led to identification of three critical impact indicators: nutrition knowledge, physical activity, and healthier eating, and also enabled NGOs to identify pathways to improve program delivery among the target population. Conclusions This workshop enabled MIF and partner NGOs to came together to align on metrics and future engagement approaches for promoting and evaluating community based healthy lifestyles programs.