“It is my pleasure to recommend Perales and Associates Evaluation Services (PAES) as I have had the opportunity to work with this agency for 15 years at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) with the California Nutrition Network Program (Network).

PAES was instrumental in assisting CDPH and the Network with establishing and evaluating a Food Security Program that included funded contractors throughout California and a Food Security Task Force. PAES worked with CDPH initially to ensure that an appropriate evaluation model and approaches (formative, process and impact) were established and utilized throughout our program planning and implementation process.

“Also, given their background and experience in evaluating county health departments (Tobacco Control Programs funded by CDPH), PAES has vast experience tailoring evaluation services based on a county or community approach and designing evaluation plans to effectively determine the impact of policy, systems, and environmental change strategies.

“PAES also provides exceptional hands-on service that includes, training, technical assistance and as needed, the flexibility of conducting site visits with local contractors to ensure cultural appropriateness and feasibility.

“They also assist with state-level planning by participating in state-level evaluation and advisory committees as needed. During my 23 years with CDPH, I have worked with many evaluation consultants and I found PAES to be one of the leading evaluation consulting agencies in Northern California. I highly recommend PAES as evaluation consultants.”

“It has been such a pleasure to work with you both this past year!! Thank you for all of your insight and interest in our work. We were continually impressed with your level of professionalism and willingness to dive deep into our organization. We truly appreciate your expertise and the time you have devoted to developing our Evaluation Plan. Above all, we learned so much—not just how to do evaluation, but why it matters and how it is meaningful for us—and we are grateful for the opportunity to learn from you. You make a great team!
Thank you!”

“Next year will mark the 25th year of our agency’s relationship with Dan and Denise Perales. Obviously, we are more than satisfied with their services! They are consummate professionals, never miss a deadline, keep abreast of the latest research, and do a great job at writing our evaluation summaries. They are accessible, can explain the importance of evaluation methodology to even the newest health educator, and are happy to produce evaluation forms, surveys and charts for us.

“I believe what sets Dan and Denise apart from the norm is their level of caring. They are both dedicated to healthy communities and look for ways that a project can contribute to that, providing technical assistance and valuable input beyond the scope of a single project. Their advice can improve your project, save you time, and even save you money.”

“I have worked with Dan and Denise for the past 11 years on the evaluation of public health programs in Calaveras County, a rural area in northern California. Since 2001, I have collaborated with them on our Tobacco Prevention Program (TPP), an initiative of the California Department of Public Health, and on the Community Transformation Grant to reduce sweetened beverage consumption and increase safe routes to school in our rural area.

“I have found them to be true professionals. They are thorough, detail-oriented, judicious and care about what they do. They have consistently developed strategies for our agency that have enabled us to secure continuous funding.”

“Dan and Denise have provided comprehensive evaluation services to Leah’s Pantry for many years, supporting our organization’s mission by ensuring we are providing high impact programs. They have provided evaluation of online and in-person education classes as well as the evaluation of cutting-edge trauma-informed approaches to nutrition and cooking. In addition to high quality evaluation services, we appreciate their years of experience, their deep curiosity about the field, and their extensive network and consistent willingness to work with others.”

“Between 2011 and 2016, I had the pleasure of working with Perales and Associates Evaluation Services across three California Association of Food Bank’s (CAFB) projects that exemplified their research and program evaluation expertise.

“First, Dan and Denise Perales conducted a review of the literature to identify nutrition education best practices that resulted in the pilot-testing and final development of the CAFB Nutrition Education and Produce Distribution Toolbox that was distributed to food banks. They then worked on two projects that used quasi-experimental pre and post designs to assess the effectiveness of our Produce Education Program (PEP) in conducting brief 5 to 10-minute nutrition education with clients attending food distributions at food banks and pantries.

“The PAES findings showed that the PEP emphasis on fruit and vegetable consumption and recipe preparation, plus the availability of featured fresh produce on the day of the PEP presentation, had a synergistic effect on the clients’ produce consumption and purchasing behaviors.

“At CAFB, we found Dan and Denise’s evaluation skills instrumental to pursuing our mission of ending hunger in California. We highly recommend their evaluation services.” Information on PEP and the evaluation reports are available at: http://www.cafoodbanks.org/produce-education.”