Trauma-Informed Evaluation: A Lens to Improve Evaluation Practice

Trauma-Informed Evaluation is a lens/framework to improve evaluation practice, specifically evaluator behavior and study design. It will help build trust and greater understanding between the evaluator and stakeholders, participants, and informants. It will add a perspective that considers the larger context and experience of people, organizations, institutions, and cultures by way of acknowledging trauma and its detrimental effect on the growth and wellbeing of people and communities. During this workshop we’ll explore how we can ensure evaluation design accounts for trauma among those we engage in our work. At minimum, how do we avoid reinforcing trauma? As evaluators, what can we do to be more trauma-informed in our methodology, data collection, and analysis?

Please join us as we learn from the following panel of presenters: 

• Blair Harrison is a Senior Research Scientist and Evaluator at the Minnesota Department of Health. In her current work she aims to, along with her team, approach evaluation and data-driven projects through a trauma-informed, intersectional lens. Blair has worked at the cross-section of data and trauma for over a decade with work experience in hospice, Huntington’s disease, substance use and severe persistent illness, pediatric emergency rooms, and military sexual trauma.
• Jill Lipski Cain is a Managing Consultant and The Improve Group, an evaluation firm in St. Paul. She works to make evaluation inclusive and meaningful. Her background in gender violence prevention has helped her evaluation work to be trauma-informed. Jill has led projects in Minnesota and North Dakota that explore organizational and statewide efforts to be trauma-informed.
• Cheryl Holm-Hansen, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Manager at Wilder Research. She has more than 25 years of experience conducting evaluations and other applied research. While her work encompasses a wide range of topics, she specializes in the area of child and adolescent mental health, including early childhood mental health, school-based mental health, mental health systems development, and recovery from trauma.  She is a former MN Evaluation Association board member.

Develop your evaluator competencies in the areas of: context – focuses on understanding the unique circumstances and perspectives of evaluations and stakeholders/participants, and interpersonal – focuses on human relations and social interactions that ground evaluator behavior and effectiveness.