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Learning loops: fostering continuous improvement

To ensure strategic grantmakers learn from and improve their approaches, they must be provided ongoing opportunities to reflect, monitor what is happening within the interventions (as well as where and why), explore how and why context is changing and identify and undertake necessary adaptations (Patrizi et al. 2013; Snow et al. 2015). The PHAC-IS incorporated learning loops as a part of its internal reflective and adaptive process. Learning loops were a way for the team to strive for continuous improvement of the funding model and gain new knowledge at multiple levels (funded project staff, program team and additional colleagues). One example of a learning loop process occurred with the information and data drawn from project reporting. As part of the funding requirements, projects reported annually on both the evaluation results of their intervention and on performance measurement data connected to their work plan. Information from the annual reporting tool was linked by program team members to program-level objectives and reported through annual core indicator reports. Key themes and findings from the project-level reporting were also analyzed to inform program-level planning. The PHAC-IS program team integrated a supportive social innovation lens to ensure that continuous improvement and innovation were part of program evolution. This allowed the PHAC-IS to support creative and interesting analyses at the program level around key themes that fed back into program design and process. This approach focused on learning and adapting to achieve desired results, rather than adherence to a static workplan. The success of this work relied on a number of program staff attributes, including: capacity to foster innovation; an ability to understand principles of population health promotion; the application and understanding of intervention research; and an ability to promote the use of evidence to develop, implement, evaluate and improve policies, programs and services. Recommendations gleaned from this analysis were systematically incorporated into several components of the program. Examples included enhancing data collection tools for guiding policy-impact evaluation and re-designing workplans/timeframes to develop meaningful, multi-sectoral partnerships. Intervention research provided a unique and transparent platform for these learning loops, further supporting greater transparency and accountability around the functioning and strategic directions of the PHAC-IS as a federal level grant and contribution program. During the implementation and scale-up phases of the PHAC-IS, several adaptations to project work plans and budgets were required to conform to the realities of project context.