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Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Sadrivaan A and B (The Hilton Istanbul Hotel )
Twenty years after the launching of its foundational document at a WHO conference in Ottawa , health promotion appears to be well and alive. Many western countries have incorporated health promotion into public health practice. In developing countries, health promotion is increasingly conceived as an appropriate response to the enormous task of addressing the challenges associated with the epidemiological transition from infectious to chronic disease and from rural to urban life. What started in 1986 as a regional reform for public health has become a global current that shapes and orients public health practice.
Associated with this mainstreaming and expansion of health promotion is an increasing demand for it to prove its worth. During the past 10 years various initiatives have been launched in western countries to demonstrate that interventions designed along the strategies of the Ottawa Charter can impact population health. To answer this call, researchers and evaluators have to take into account many of the specificities that define health promotion. Outlining those challenges, the WHO-EURO Working Group on Health Promotion Evaluation concluded that failing to consider the specificities of health promotion in the design and implementation of evaluation research may lead to inaccurate results and eventually to misguided policy decisions about population health interventions.
In response to the limited capacity demonstrated to date by evaluation endeavors to contribute solid evidence to both the overall value of health promotion and to its specific interventions, the purpose of the book is to explore the specificity of health promotion evaluation, developing the argument that, over and above a methodological kit, evaluation is a practice that seeks to transform the social reality of interventions. Presenting our book to the public health community we will answer the question whether health promotion evaluation should be approached differently from other evaluation endeavors, with a clear YES.
Associated with this mainstreaming and expansion of health promotion is an increasing demand for it to prove its worth. During the past 10 years various initiatives have been launched in western countries to demonstrate that interventions designed along the strategies of the Ottawa Charter can impact population health. To answer this call, researchers and evaluators have to take into account many of the specificities that define health promotion. Outlining those challenges, the WHO-EURO Working Group on Health Promotion Evaluation concluded that failing to consider the specificities of health promotion in the design and implementation of evaluation research may lead to inaccurate results and eventually to misguided policy decisions about population health interventions.
In response to the limited capacity demonstrated to date by evaluation endeavors to contribute solid evidence to both the overall value of health promotion and to its specific interventions, the purpose of the book is to explore the specificity of health promotion evaluation, developing the argument that, over and above a methodological kit, evaluation is a practice that seeks to transform the social reality of interventions. Presenting our book to the public health community we will answer the question whether health promotion evaluation should be approached differently from other evaluation endeavors, with a clear YES.
Learning Objectives: 1. Recognize the specificity of health promotion evaluation as a practice that seeks to transform the social reality of interventions. 2. Discuss why health promotion evaluation should be approached differently from other evaluation endeavors in order to produce accurate results and well guided policy decisions about population health interventions.
Sub-Theme: Public Health and Research: Evidence Based Policy on Health