Blending Participatory Action Synthesis and Meta-ethnography: An Innovative Approach to Evaluating Complex Community Health Transformation

Background: Community health improvement processes are diverse and complex, and evaluation methods to gain generalizable knowledge across community are limited by available data, and the need for deep contextual knowledge. Methods: This article describes an innovative participatory approach to evaluation of a community transformation initiative involving up to eighteen communication nationwide. The approach blends two qualitative research synthesis methods: participatory action synthesis and meta-ethnography and applies them to the pragmatic evaluation of a program in real-life settings. Results: In this article, we present the justification for and details about the evaluation process. Four cycles of synthesis and engagement resulted in development of concepts to describe community actions for transformation.Conclusion: The approach presented here will be useful to both researchers and practitioners interested in evaluating community-based health and well-being initiatives and other complex interventions conducted in complex settings.