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While the non-profit sector has an integral role in health promotion, it is unclear whether these organisations have the capacity for health promotion activities. This study aims to explore and describe capacity changes of a non-profit organisation during a 3-year community-based nutrition intervention. The non-profit organisation, with 3800 members throughout the state of Queensland, Australia, implemented a 3-year food literacy community-based intervention. A team of qualified nutritionists delivered the program in partnership with community-based volunteers. A separate aim of the intervention was to build capacity of the non-profit organisation for health promotion. A qualitative study was undertaken, using a social constructivist approach to explore organisational capacity changes longitudinally. All relevant participants including non-profit executive managers and nutritionists were included in the study (100% response rate). Data collection included semi-structured interviews (n = 17) at multiple intervention time points and document analysis of program newsletters (n = 21). Interview transcripts and documents were analysed separately using thematic and content analysis. Codes and categories between the two data sources were then compared and contrasted to build themes. Organisational capacity was predominantly influenced by four themes; 'communicating', 'changing relationships', 'limited organisational learning' and 'adaptability and resistance to change'. Developing non-profit organisational health promotion capacity appears to require focusing on fostering communication processes and building positive relationships over time. Capacity changes of the non-profit organisation were not linear, fluctuating across various levels over time. Assessing non-profit organisational capacity to implement community interventions by describing adaptive capacity, may help researchers focus on the processes that influence capacity development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building capacity to enhance health promotion intervention effectiveness is a desirable, difficult to achieve and rarely evaluated aspect of practice. This study aims to describe an approach for evaluating capacity building embedded in a state-wide health promotion intervention that had a primary objective of enhancing food literacy and secondary objective of building health promotion capacity. The multi-strategy rural food literacy intervention centred on a group-based, hands-on learning workshop series. Logic modelling, theory of change and clarification of the explicit assumption of the intervention relating to food literacy and capacity building objectives were documented. The evaluation approach acknowledged the complexity of the intervention that utilised a food literacy program as a vessel to build relationships, enabling capacity-building strategies over time, and used multiple forms of data to measure organisational, community and individual capacity. The development of a shared mixed method program evaluation plan was achieved through co-design. One-hundred and twenty-two peer facilitators were trained across 81 communities and reported increases in self-efficacy for health promotion action. There was broad awareness and support for the program within the organisation. The majority (75%) of communities involved in the intervention implemented at least one health promotion activity, demonstrating some health promotion capacity gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]