Implementing Shared Leadership and Community Engagement in Behavioral Health Program Evaluation: Learnings from Diverse California Bay-Area Program Evaluations

The increasing need for behavioral health services across the United States, coupled with cuts to County, State, and Federal budgets, have strained behavioral health systems like never before. At the same time, positive consumer outcomes (and often, ongoing program funding) require agencies to prioritize ongoing program monitoring and improvement through systematic data collection and evaluation processes. As a result of the tension between these competing realities, program evaluations frequently occur with siloed actors: behavioral health staff may feel too overworked and under-resourced to engage in or contribute to evaluation activities, and evaluators may assume sole responsibility in implementing processes that lack responsivity to the very agencies they are examining. Using a series of behavioral health program evaluations conducted throughout diverse California Bay Area jurisdictions, this paper details actionable strategies evaluators used to engage behavioral health agency staff as shared leaders within complex multi-year evaluation projects.