President’s Message

Moya L. Alfonso, PhD, MSPH

President

It is an honor and a privilege to be the President of the Southeast Evaluation Association. I have served on the Board for several years and have enjoyed my time with the organization. The Southeast Evaluation Association is a vital source of information for those learning about program evaluation and a critical networking and professional development resource for seasoned evaluators living and working in the Southeast United States. Our membership is currently relatively small compared to other professional organizations, but we offer powerful resources and connections to those who know of us. As President, I intend to work in collaboration with the Board to expand awareness and reach to students, nonprofits and community-based organizations, and seasoned evaluators. It is my dream to expand our presence and more directly impact communities throughout the Southeast United States.

For the first 19 years of my career, I worked primarily in academia. Whether as a new Graduate Research Assistant or as a tenured Associate Professor of Health Policy and Community Health at Georgia Southern University, I used my love of and expertise in program evaluation to serve the communities in which I lived and worked. Program evaluation is a powerful tool for communities to learn and use. As a faculty member, I worked tirelessly to build nonprofit’s and community-based organizations’ capacity to use formative, process, and outcome evaluation for public health programming. As a faculty member, I published many peer-reviewed articles and gave many presentations on my work with building community capacity for program evaluation and assumed my work and the work of other faculty members like me was reaching the practice world.

In 2019, I decided to leave academia to practice public health. I wanted to more directly contribute to the health and well-being of community members. I am now Executive Director of We Care Manatee, a nonprofit located in Manatee County, Florida that provides a variety of programs that enable access to health care among the undeserved and those trying to survive without health care insurance in our nation. Although my time there has been short, I quickly realized that my assumption that my work in academia and the work of other prominent faculty members has not and is not reaching the practice community quickly enough. For example, basic program evaluation concepts that I learned 19 years ago as a graduate student are just now reaching the practice community in south Florida. This saddens and frustrates me because nonprofits like the one I now direct survive by proving to donors and funders that the work they do is valuable and necessary to the health and well-being of the communities they serve. In short, they need program evaluation capacity in order to justify their continued existence.

With this new insight comes a deep desire to position the Southeast Evaluation as a capacity-building resource for those who need us the most – students with a strong desire to serve their communities, nonprofits and community-based organizations that want to develop or strengthen their evaluation approach, and seasoned evaluation professionals who seek to better support the practice community. To achieve this vision, I intend to work with our Board to increase student engagement in our organization, create and expand our training resource center located on our web site, and more effectively market SEA to the practice community. In addition to an active Board, SEA needs passionate students and seasoned professionals to help us achieve this vision.

If you are not already a member, please considering joining us today. If you are a current member and would like to find about more about how you can help us achieve this vision, please email me at seacoordinator@southeastevaluation.org.

Dr. Moya L. Alfonso is Executive Director of We Care Manatee, a nonprofit that provides health care services to Manatee County, Florida residents who are not protected by our National health care system. Prior to this role, she was an Associate Professor at the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, Georgia Southern University. She has had an interdisciplinary training in public health and educational research and evaluation, and has received formal training in project/program evaluation, and in the creation of logic models for assessment and evaluation. She has conducted formative and summative program evaluations for numerous adolescent health interventions, with emphasis on physical activity and substance use prevention. Prior to coming to Georgia Southern University, Dr. Alfonso served as Co-Director of the Methods and Evaluation Unit for the CDC funded Florida Prevention Research Center at the University of South Florida. During her tenure at the Prevention Research Center, Dr. Alfonso led the evaluation of VERBTM Summer Scorecard, a CDC recognized promising program for increasing physical activity among 8- to 13-year-olds, and served as the local evaluator for a multi-site evaluation of the Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive Grant (SPF SIG) alcohol reduction program. She is a dedicated and passionate public health professional with almost 20 years of experience serving the underserved. She has served on the SEA Board for several years and currently serves as President.