The Program Sustainability Assessment Tool: A New Instrument for Public Health Programs

Abstract

IntroductionPublic health programs can deliver benefits only if they are able to sustain programs, policies, and activities over time. Although numerous sustainability frameworks and models have been developed, there are almost no assessment tools that have demonstrated reliability or validity or have been widely disseminated. We present the Program Sustainability Assessment Tool (PSAT), a new and reliable instrument for assessing the capacity for program sustainability of various public health and other programs.MethodsA measurement development study was conducted to assess the reliability of the PSAT. Program managers and staff (n = 592) representing 252 public health programs used the PSAT to rate the sustainability of their program. State and community-level programs participated, representing 4 types of chronic disease programs: tobacco control, diabetes, obesity prevention, and oral health.ResultsThe final version of the PSAT contains 40 items, spread across 8 sustainability domains, with 5 items per domain. Confirmatory factor analysis shows good fit of the data with the 8 sustainability domains. The subscales have excellent internal consistency; the average Cronbach’s α is 0.88, ranging from 0.79 to 0.92. Preliminary validation analyses suggest that PSAT scores are related to important program and organizational characteristics.ConclusionThe PSAT is a new and reliable assessment instrument that can be used to measure a public health program’s capacity for sustainability. The tool is designed to be used by researchers, evaluators, program managers, and staff for large and small public health programs.

Dimensions of sustainability for a health communication intervention in African American churches: a multi-methods study

“…Therefore, there is not a single measure of sustainability for this project that answers the question, “Was it sustained?” This means that predictors or influences on sustainability are also likely to differ among the different outcomes, further complicating research about factors influencing sustainability in practice. For example, to use the Program Sustainability Assessment Tool developed by Luke and colleagues [6], one would need to specify which specific sustainability outcome is being assessed, as the influencers for individual participant retention, for example, are likely to differ from influencers for church-level activity continuation or for maintenance of partnerships among organizations. In essence, it is not desirable to view sustainability as a single outcome, given the diversity of meanings and measures shown by Project HEAL.…”

“…Interest and research about the long-term sustainability of health-related interventions is growing but often has not operationalized the term “sustainability” as a set of multiple outcomes [3, 5, 6, 8–10]. Researchers, funders, policy-makers, and community practitioners are concerned whether their interventions continue after an initial research project or grant [1, 11–13].…”

“…Current research about sustainability has highlighted the importance of factors or processes that increase the likelihood of sustaining an intervention (predictors of sustainability) [6, 7, 16]. Other researchers discuss sustainability as a set of processes or capacities that take place during the initial implementation of a program [17, 18], but this approach does not require longer-term data about actual continued implementation or benefits for consumers.…”

Fit for the Future? A New Approach in the Debate about What Makes Healthcare Systems Really Sustainable

“…These kinds of questions need to be addressed in order to create a valid and reliable model to measure sustainability in healthcare systems. First steps in the direction of sustainability assessment can be observed on a smaller level, one of which is the Program Sustainability Assessment Tool developed by Luke et al [60]. The program was developed after transferring the results of a literature review [61] into a questionnaire that serves as an assessment tool to rate the sustainability of public health programs.…”

Implementing Implementation: Practical Lessons Learned From Supporting Evidence- Informed Service Delivery in Community-Based Child and Youth Mental Health Agencies

“…Some agencies used an online sustainability tool to assess their readiness to sustain the new practice and identify priorities on which to focus (Luke, Calhoun, Robichaux, Elliott, & Moreland-Russell, 2014). The final phase included a knowledge mobilization session where agencies shared their activities, tools, experiences, and lessons learned.…”