Addressing social determinants of health (SDH) requires multileveled intervention designs . Increasingly, organizations and coalitions face pressure to use evidence-based strategies when seeking to address SDH . Evidence-based strategies, however, must be locally relevant and integrated into existing systems to function efficiently . We propose the incorporation of an effective rapid assessment technique, Rapid Assessment, Response, and Evaluation (RARE), with evidence-based strategies, findings, and recommendations embedded in community-engaged research to increase the likelihood of success in addressing SDH . Our RARE project-a partnership among a community health center, a nonprofit funding agency, and academic faculty researchers-resulted in community-and policy-level interventions for the prevention of childhood obesity in a Southwestern U.S. city.

Scholars and clinicians are increasingly recognizing the complexity of social contexts of health and the need for multifunctioning approaches to health care problems including community- and policy-level strategies. Barriers to change in health care policy can sometimes be attributed to the actions of advocacy coalitions who operate from a limited view of "policy change." Advocates have a tendency to pressure stakeholders to mandate laws as a final resolution of a movement, often leading to failure or, worse, stigmatizing of issues. A more inclusive focus on health policy change as an ongoing process increases the efficacy of advocacy and outcomes measurement. This article presents a tool for policy action that coalition members developed through the implementation of a 3-year grant to improve the safety net for preventing childhood obesity. Scholars and policy makers developed the Policy Coalition Evaluation Tool with the intent to create a model to guide and measure efforts and outcomes of a local community-based policy coalition. The authors suggest using community-based participatory research approaches for developing a coalition-specific Policy Coalition Evaluation Tool to increase the effectiveness of advocacy groups and the documentation of coalition activities over time.