Evaluating Complexity: Lessons from the National Evaluation of Healthy Communities Together

Introduction

This blog post shares learning from the evaluation of the National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) Healthy Communities Together (HCT) programme. It highlights 5 challenges faced when evaluating a programme like HCT and how the evaluators approached these challenges, focusing on what worked well and less so.

These reflections will be helpful to others evaluating similar programmes, as well as for funders and grantees.

Findings

The blog highlights lessons from evaluating the HCT programme. Partnerships worked in different ways and focused on different priorities in each place. This made it difficult to evaluate the programme as a single model. Partnerships and activities also changed over time as relationships developed.

Many early outcomes focused on stronger collaboration, trust and new ways of working. These changes may support longer-term improvements in health and wellbeing but are difficult to measure in the short term.

The blog also highlights the need to clearly explain the role of evaluation and learning support. Working closely with partners helped evaluators understand local context and adapt their approach.