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Performance Improvement 2008
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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201Message from the Secretary
Program evaluation:
to study and assess projects, policies and programs and determine if they work. What is a program supposed to do? Is it having unintended or unforeseen consequences? Is it causing what is being measured or are other events or processes causing the outcome, or preventing the hoped-for outcome?Michael Leavitt, Secretary
Department of Health and Human Services
2008It is with pleasure that I offer this report to the Congress and the American People.
This report serves as one way that this wealth of information can be made available to a wider audience. The report is both a statutory requirement and a way of assisting our annual internal review of all that we have done to examine the programs we are entrusted with during our tenure. This report addresses provisions of Section 241 of the Public Health Service Act that require the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services annually to report evaluation findings from studies it has conducted to both the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee of the Senate and to the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House.
The Department of Health and Human Services conducts and funds an enormous number of important evaluations, studies, and policy analyses regarding health and social service programs. This report examines merely the studies completed during the most recent fiscal year. There are many more still being conducted. With over 300 programs to keep tabs on, evaluation and performance measurement is something we take very seriously.
Benjamin Sasse
Assistant Secretary for Planning and EvaluationWelcome,
This report was prepared by the Performance Improvement Reporting Staff of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
The report summarizes 150 evaluations finished during the most recently completed fiscal year. We are pleased that this represents the most thorough reporting to date on the nature and findings of evaluations in the Department and hope that it will serve both professional policy experts as well as interested citizens who wish to know the nature of the work their government undertakes. As we continue to refine and strengthen this annual report, we welcome your feedback. For this purpose, we have included a one-page evaluation form at the end of the report that you are welcome to submit either by mail or email.
In addition, interested readers of this report may see the entire database of over 8,000 abstracts and summaries, many with links to the original reports, as well as to access the reports in this Performance Improvement series at: http://aspe.hhs.gov/pic/performance
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Introduction
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Chapter I - Highlights of Findings from Completed Evaluations
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Chapter II - Program Evaluation at the Department of Health & Human Services
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Chapter III - Summaries of Completed Evaluations - What Was Studied and the Key Finding
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Appendix A - full set of the 2007-2012 HHS Strategic Plan Goals and Objectives.
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Appendix B - each agency's and office's program mission and evaluation program.
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Appendix C - table of the studies in this report, organized by agency and office, indicating the Objective where the study may be found.
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Appendix D - glossary of evaluation terms, terms-of-art used by some offices or agencies, and acronyms for the organizational units of HHS.
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Appendix E - guidance regarding online access to the full database of evaluations.
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Appendix F - optional evaluation form users of this report are invited to fill out and return.
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"PerformanceImprovement2008.pdf" (pdf, 1.29Mb)
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