ORCA Project

This project aims to test a decision support tool — ORCA (Optimizing Responses for Collaborative Action) — and group decision facilitation processes to support intervention selection with ORCA.

ORCA logo

Project Background:

ORCA was first developed by talking to local decision makers about how they determine whether to implement an intervention. These decision makers included public health department directors, children’s advocacy organizations, state legislators, child and family serving-agency directors, and social service department directors. Their feedback was expanded with literature from Implementation Science so that ORCA can best help you focus on the intervention factors that matter for successful intervention implementation.

Project Goals:

  1. Develop a user-friendly, web-based method for users to complete ORCA, a multi-criteria decision analysis tool. ORCA incorporates users’ preferences and evidence evaluations to help them compare interventions and decide which to adopt.

  2. Evaluate two strategies for groups to integrate ORCA into group discussions about intervention selection— Live Facilitation (ORCA-L) or Automated Facilitation (ORCA-A). Participants in each strategy will have access to ORCA. Participants will be able to see how their results compare to other users in their decision-making group or other groups (e.g., community members) in their jurisdiction (i.e., state, tribe, jurisdiction, or community).

  3. Track the implementation activities completed for each selected intervention (or re-selected, if already implemented) after groups complete ORCA-A or ORCA-L.

Project Phases:

About the Project

feedback

Phase 1: User Centered Feedback Sessions 1+2

Obtain feedback on ORCA Tool prototype.

facilitation

Phase 2: ORCA-A versus ORCA-L Facilitation

Test an automated versus live facilitation strategy for reviewing ORCA Tool results in decision-making groups.

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Phase 3: Implementation Completion

Track progress of intervention implementation for interventions selected with the ORCA Tool.

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The ORCA Tool

BRINGING SCIENCE TO DECISION MAKING

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ORCA is an evidence-informed tool designed to help groups of people decide which interventions are the best fit for their community.

 That’s where the ORCA Tool comes in!
Deciding which interventions to implement can be challenging.

ORCA allows you to express which intervention differences matter to you. This can help you make timely, thoughtful decisions.

The ORCA Tool is designed to help you with...

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PRIORITIZATION

Prioritize which intervention differences matter. ORCA calls these “decision criteria.”
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COMPARISON

Compare interventions based on the decision criteria that you and others in your community prioritized.
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COLLABORATION

Explore how your priorities align with others in your community. Leverage resources for conducting guided conversations to interpret ORCA’s results to align perspectives and confidently select intervention(s).
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TRANSPARENCY

Receive data to clearly identify and document why the selected interventions were preferred.

The ORCA Tool will provide you with…

  • A ranked list of interventions
    based on prioritized
    decision criteria.

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  • Visualizations and raw data
    of why rankings differ between
    group members.

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This project is supported by NIMH: K01MH128761 and approved by the Chestnut Health Systems IRB (Project 11171-0623)