Erica Clarke is a Senior Evaluation Specialist at The Evaluation Center with more than ten years of experience in evaluating hospital and health center based interventions and programs, community-based coalitions and statewide public health initiatives. She is passionate about employing a participatory approach to evaluation and values engaging stakeholders early in evaluation planning to encourage utilization of evaluation results for decision-making and program improvement.

Currently, Erica is leading a research study examining the functioning and sustainability of the community coalitions funded through the Colorado Department of Human Services Office of Behavioral Health Partnerships for Success Grant. Additionally, she is co-leading the needs assessment and evaluation of a collaborative project funded by the Colorado Department of Human Services Office of Behavioral Health project that aims to support prevention education with the end goal of reducing youth marijuana use and delaying the age that youth first use marijuana. For three years, she provided evaluation training and technical assistance to staff at local public health agencies across Colorado and led an evaluation study of the community grantees’ programs and policy work for the State Tobacco Education Prevention Partnership (STEPP).

Prior to joining The Evaluation Center in 2015, she worked for nine years evaluating hospital and health center based interventions and programs at the Center for Community Health Improvement at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. There she also gained experience working with community-based coalitions doing prevention work in the areas of underage drinking, opioid misuse and overdose and obesity. She has worked with a wide variety of stakeholders across multiple health issues.

Erica earned her Master’s Degree in Psychology in at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts and received her Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

When not at the office, she enjoys spending time with her family in Colorado’s beautiful landscape.