Evaluation in health promotion. Principles and perspectives

Policy-makers, professionals of all kinds and the general public increasingly recognize social and economic factors as important determinants of health. Because health promotion approaches address these factors, they can play an increasingly valuable role in protecting and improving health. At the same time, funding sources increasingly demand evidence that initiatives give value for money. Health promotion initiatives need effective evaluation to realize their potential: both to prove their value as investments and to increase their effectiveness in achieving their aims.

To help meet this need, the WHO European Working Group on Health Promotion Evaluation examined the current range of qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods to provide guidance to policy-makers and practitioners. This book is the result. It comprises an extensive compilation and discussion of the theory, methodologies and practice of evaluating health promotion initiatives in Europe and the Americas. The book takes three perspectives in examining the issues. It includes a retrospective examination of the evolution of health promotion evaluation. This provides the context for assessing and understanding the current state of evaluations of initiatives addressing settings, policies and systems for promoting health. Finally, the chapter authors and the Working group as a whole make many recommendations for improvement that provide a look into the future.

This book shows how a health promotion approach offers a comprehensive framework for planning and implementing interventions that can effectively address today's major health-related problems. The authors describe how good evaluations assist initiatives in achieving their goals, provide a wealth of guidance on how to undertake them and call for greater investment in the evaluation of health promotion. The authors hope that their work will stimulate policy-makers and practitioners to invest in and undertake good evaluation for good health promotion. This is their commitment; they hope that readers share it.