Health Promotion Evaluation Practices In The Americas

More and more, health promotion is a crucial component of public health, to the extent that public health interventions are called on to prove their effectiveness and appraised for scientific validity, a practice many in the field consider self-defeating. Health Promotion Evaluation Practices in the Americas cogently demonstrates that scientific rigor and the goals of health promotion are less in conflict than commonly thought, synthesizing multiple traditions from countries throughout North, Central, and South America (and across the developed-to-developing-world continuum) for a volume that is both diverse in scope and unified in purpose. The book’s examples—representing robust theoretical and practical literatures as well as initiatives from Rio de Janeiro to American Indian communities—explain why health promotion evaluation projects require different guidelines from mainstream evaluative work. The editors identify core humanitarian principles associated with health promotion (participation, empowerment, equity, sustainability, intersectoral action, multistrategy, and contextualism), while chapters highlight challenges that must be mastered to keep these principles and scientific objectives in sync, including: (1) Building health promotion values into evaluation research projects. (2) Expanding the use of evaluation in health promotion. (3) Developing meaningful evaluation questions. (4) Distinguishing between community-based participation research and evaluation-based participation. (5) Evaluating specifically for equity. (6) Designing initiatives to foster lasting social change. The applied knowledge in Health Promotion Evaluation Practices in the Americas: Values and Research can bring the goals of intervention into sharper focus for practitioners, evaluators, and decision-makers and facilitate communication on all sides—necessary steps to progress from study findings to real-world action.

This book critically analyses the influence of international policies and guidelines on the performance of interventions aimed at reducing health inequities in Latin America, with special emphasis on health promotion and health in all policies strategies. While the implementation of these interventions plays a key role in strengthening these countries’ capacity to respond to current and future challenges, the urgency and pressures of cooperation and funding agencies to show results consistent with their own agendas not only hampers this goal, but also makes the territory invisible, hiding the real problems faced by most Latin American countries, diminishing the richness of local knowledge production, and hindering the development of relevant proposals that consider the territory’s conditions and cultural identity. Departing from this general analysis, the authors search for answers to the following questions: Why, despite the importance of the theoretical advances r egarding actions to address social and health inequities, haven’t Latin American countries been able to produce the expected results? Why do successful initiatives only take place within the framework of pilot projects? Why does the ideology of health promotion and health in all policies mainly permeate structures of the health sector, but not other sectors? Why are intersectoral actions conjunctural initiatives, which often fail to evolve into permanent practices? Based on an extensive literature review, case studies, personal experiences, and interviews with key informants in the region, Globalization and Health Inequities in Latin America presents a strategy that uses monitoring and evaluation practices for enhancing the capacity of Latin American and other low and middle-income countries to implement sustainable processes to foster inclusiveness, equity, social justice and human rights. p/pp

This book is the result of the WHO European Working Group on Health Promotion Evaluation which examined the current range of qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods to provide guidance to policy-makers and practitioners. It includes an extensive c

Health Promotion Programs introduces the theory of health promotion and presents an overview of current best practices from a wide variety of settings that include schools, health care organizations, workplace, and community. The 43 contributors to Health Promotion Programs focus on students and professionals interested in planning, implementing, and evaluating programs that promote health equity. In addition to the focus on best practices, each chapter contains information on: Identifying health promotion programs Eliminating health disparities Defining and applying health promotion theories and models Assessing the needs of program participants Creating and supporting evidence-based programs Implementing health promotion programs: Tools, program staff, and budgets Advocacy Communicating health information effectively Developing and increasing program funding Evaluating, improving, and sustaining health promotion programs Health promotion challenges and opportunities Health promotion resources and career links "The authors have clearly connected the dots among planning, theory, evaluation, health disparity, and advocacy, and have created a user-friendly toolbox for health promotion empowerment." Ronald L. Braithwaite, PhD, professor, Morehouse School of Medicine, Departments of Community Health and Preventive Medicine, Family Medicine, and Psychiatry "The most comprehensive program planning text to date, this book examines all facets of planning and implementation across four key work environments where health educators function." Mal Goldsmith, PhD, CHES, professor and coordinator of Health Education, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville "Health Promotion Programs . . . . explores the thinking of some of our field's leaders and confirms its well-deserved place in the field and in our personal collections." Susan M. Radius, PhD, CHES, professor and program director, Health Science Department, Towson University

Introduction to Global Health Promotion addresses a breadth and depth of public health topics that students and emerging professionals in the field must understand as the world's burden of disease changes with non-communicable diseases on the rise in low- and middle-income countries as their middle class populations grow. Now more than ever, we need to provide health advocacy and intervention to prevent, predict, and address emerging global health issues. This new text from the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) prepares readers with thorough and thoughtful chapters on global health promotion theories, best practices, and perspectives on the future of the field, from the individual to the global level. The world's biggest health care challenges—including HIV, malaria, heart disease, smoking, and violence, among others—are explored in detail in Introduction to Global Health Promotion. The state of the science, including the latest empirical data, is distilled into 19 chapters that update readers on the complex issues surrounding a variety of illnesses and conditions, and disease epidemics and individual, social, institutional, and governmental barriers to preventing them. Expert authors bring to the fore human rights issues, new uses of technology, and practical application of theory. These perspectives, along with the book's multidisciplinary approach, serve to create a well-rounded understanding of global health today. Learn more from the Editors of Introduction to Global Health Promotion here.

"The book provides an excellent combination of broad theoretical background with a generous helping of vocational guidance on the practice of health promotion." scotregen "A very welcome addition to the practical side of health promotion! Laverack’s brief and simply-worded text weaves together just the right balance of theory, evidence, tips and case studies to satisfy the new learner looking to gain a grasp of health promotion’s empowering whole, while still offering new insights to the more seasoned practitioner." Ronald Labonté, Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa How can health promotion practitioners help communities to become more empowered? How do you encourage different communities to work together towards a shared goal? How can you focus your resources to be most effective in building empowered communities? How do you evaluate your success (and failures) in building empowered communities? Power and empowerment are two complex concepts that are central to health promotion practice. People experience empowerment in many different ways and this book explains an approach that has been used by health promoters to intentionally build and evaluate empowerment. The book provides a special focus on communities and is illustrated throughout with useful field experiences in the United Kingdom, Asia, North America, the Pacific region and Africa. The book aims to provide the reader with: An understanding of the key concepts of power and empowerment and the link to improved health outcomes in the context of health promotion programmes An understanding of practical approaches that can be used in health promotion programming to build and evaluate empowered communities Case study examples of how communities can be empowered in practice This unique book offers sound theoretical principles to underpin the practical approaches used to build empowered communities and brings together new and innovative approaches in health promotion practice. Health Promotion Practice is essential reading for health promotion students and practitioners who want to learn more about innovative approaches to build empowered communities in their everyday work. It will inspire them to work in more empowering ways in health promotion practice and to carefully contemplate how they can influence the way others gain power.

The third edition of this highly successful book has been fully revised and updated to reflect the ongoing developments in the field of health promotion, to help those in health promotion choose and implement accurate, reliable, and evidence-based evaluation methods.

Health Promotion in Canada is a comprehensive profile of the history, current status, and future of health promotion in Canada. This fourth edition maintains the critical approach of the previous three editions but provides a current and in-depth analysis of theory, practice, policy, and research in Canada in relation to recent innovative approaches in health promotion. Thoroughly updated with 15 new chapters and all-new learning objectives, the edited collection contains contributions by prominent Canadian academics, researchers, and practitioners as well as an afterword by Ronald Labonté. The authors cover a broad range of topics including inequities in health, Indigenous communities and immigrants, mental health, violence against women, global ecological change, and globalization. The book also provides critical reflections on practice and concrete Canadian examples that bring theory to life.