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Evidence-based practice and capacity-building approaches are essential for large-scale health promotion interventions. However, there are few models in the literature to guide and evaluate training of social service workers in community settings. This paper presents the development and evaluation of the “train-the-trainer” workshop (TTT) for the first large scale, community-based, family intervention projects, entitled “Happy Family Kitchen Project” (HFK) under the FAMILY project, a Hong Kong Jockey Club Initiative for a Harmonious Society. The workshop aimed to enhance social workers’ competence and performance in applying positive psychology constructs in their family interventions under HFK to improve family well-being of the community they served. The two-day TTT was developed and implemented by a multidisciplinary team in partnership with community agencies to 50 social workers (64% women). It focused on the enhancement of knowledge, attitude, and practice of five specific positive psychology themes, which were the basis for the subsequent development of the 23 family interventions for 1419 participants. Acceptability and applicability were enhanced by completing a needs assessment prior to the training. The TTT was evaluated by trainees’ reactions to the training content and design, changes in learners (trainees) and benefits to the service organizations. Focus group interviews to evaluate the workshop at three months after the training, and questionnaire survey at pre-training, immediately after, six months, one year and two years after training were conducted. There were statistically significant increases with large to moderate effect size in perceived knowledge, self-efficacy and practice after training, which sustained to 2-year follow-up. Furthermore, there were statistically significant improvements in family communication and well-being of the participants in the HFK interventions they implemented after training. This paper offers a practical example of development, implementation and model-based evaluation of training programs, which may be helpful to others seeking to develop such programs in diverse communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hospital Authority (HA) is a statutory body managing all the public hospitals and institutes in Hong Kong (HK). In recent decades, Hong Kong Hospital Authority (HKHA) has been making efforts to improve the healthcare services, but there still exist some problems like unfair resource allocation and poor management, as reported by the Hong Kong medical legislative committee. One critical consequence of these problems is low healthcare efficiency of hospitals, leading to low satisfaction among patients. Moreover, HKHA also suffers from the conflict between limited resource and growing demand. An effective evaluation of HA is important for resource planning and healthcare decision making. In this paper, we propose a two-phase method to evaluate HA efficiency for reducing healthcare expenditure and improving healthcare service. Specifically, in Phase I, we measure the HKHA efficiency changes from 2000 to 2013 by applying a novel DEA-Malmquist index with undesirable factors. In Phase II, we further explore the impact of some exogenous factors (e.g., population density) on HKHA efficiency by Tobit regression model. Empirical results show that there are significant differences between the efficiencies of different hospitals and clusters. In particular, it is found that the public hospital serving in a richer district has a relatively lower efficiency. To a certain extent, this reflects the socioeconomic reality in HK that people with better economic condition prefers receiving higher quality service from the private hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]