Long-term evaluation of community health promotion: using capacity building as an intermediate outcome measure

Community capacity building is an essential approach for health promotion, combining a participatory approach with the view to community ownership. Little research focuses on practical capacity building strategies and monitoring. Our paper looks into involving stakeholders in facilitated group discussions as a specific strategy for fostering capacity building processes. These processes focused on physical activity (PA) promotion in two German communities (ACTION4men). Along the dimensions of capacity building suggested in literature (e.g., problem solving, resource mobilization, leadership), we implemented two participatory stakeholder groups (1/community). These groups were motivated to develop and implement PA interventions for men >50 years. For measuring capacity building processes, a semi-standardized monitoring instrument was used to document all group meetings. Additionally, we conducted semi-standardized interviews with group participants and drop-outs to capture their perspectives on capacity building. All documents were analyzed using thematic analysis. We successfully established stakeholder groups that planned and implemented a range of local measures meant to increase PA among older men. In one community, the process was sustainable, whereby the group continued to meet regularly over years. Capacity building was successful to a certain degree (e.g., regarding participation, problem assessment, and resource mobilization), but stalled after first meetings. Capacity building processes differed between the two communities in terms of leadership and sustainability. The developed interventions mainly addressed the access to organized sport courses, rather than tackling walkability or active transport. The theoretical capacity building approach was successful to develop and implement programs aimed at promoting PA. The actual capacity building processes depend upon the composition of stakeholder groups and inherent power relations.

Section: Semi-standardized Monitoring Protocolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Comparisons With Other Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capacity Building in Community Stakeholder Groups for Increasing Physical Activity: Results of a Qualitative Study in Two German Communities

Loss

Brew‐Sam

Metz

et al. 2020

“…, n be n evaluation criteria. The p experts are requested to compare criteria in pairs to develop Z (1) , Z (2) , . .…”

Section: Step 3: Compute the Initial Direct-relation Fuzzy Matrixmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Health promotion facilitates individuals' increased control over their personal health. It involves an extensive range of environmental and social interventions that are intended to benefit and protect people's health and improve quality of life [2]. Health refers to the process of achieving comfort without disease, physical, social and psychological issues, while health promotion helps people to have the ability to control health risk factors in order to improve their health [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Social Marketing Success Criteria in Health Promotion: A F-DEMATEL Approach

Liao

2020

Health promotion campaigns are used to raise awareness about health issues with the purpose of improving health outcomes and community wellbeing. They are important for increasing community awareness of health behavior changes. In the application of health promotion, social marketing can be used to influence changes in individual behavior. Social marketing encourages the social behavioral change of the target audience. This social behavioral change refers to the behavior of a certain number of target audiences, not just individual behavior. This research identified various social marketing success criteria to improve the performance of health promotion using decision-making method. Fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (F-DEMATEL) is a structural causal relation method that has been verified effectual in congregating the viewpoints of professionals and thus providing information of greater reliability in various areas. F-DEMATEL method helps to identify the core problems and direction of improvement in complex systems by quantifying the degree to which criteria attributes interact with each other. This research applied F-DEMATEL to evaluate the complex interrelation success criteria of social marketing in order to effectively implement health promotion. Several effective criteria were derived from this research. These influential criteria are “Designing effective Communication message”, “Meeting the needs of beneficiaries”, “Providing more benefit than cost”, “Marketing mix elements”, “Customer orientation”, “Organizational advantage” and “Market selection”. The practitioner must consider the needs of the recipients to accomplish a successful social marketing campaign in health promotion. Moreover, the practitioner also has to design an attractive message and marketing mix strategy to communicate the benefits of the behavioral change to the target audience. Besides, the message delivered by the known organization increases the success of social marketing in promoting healthy lifestyle. This study provides important information for the non-profit organization about selecting the significant criteria to lead to the success of the campaign.

“…Nickel et al [43,44] operationalized a quantitative instrument to measure community capacity, which is based on the work of Laverack and Labonte [15]. Their developed KEQ-instrument (capacity building in small areas/neighbourhoods) consists of 51 standardized items in four domains regarding health and was pilot tested in a long-term prevention program for children and their parents in deprived neighborhoods.…”

Section: Comparison With Other Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Health Promoters Can Assess Capacity Building Processes in Setting-Based Approaches—Development and Testing of a Monitoring Instrument

Sauter

Lindacher

Rueter

et al. 2020

Background: Health promoters often use stakeholder groups to jointly plan and implement local interventions. Stakeholder groups should take over responsibility to later run the health promotion program independently. Monitoring this process of capacity building can help health promoters improve the quality of the process. Instruments for the systematic assessment of capacity building among stakeholder groups are scarce. The goal of this study was to develop, and pilot test a generic assessment instrument for setting-based capacity building. Methods: We drafted a semi-standardized monitoring instrument to be used in stakeholder groups in various settings. This “EVA-protocol” (short for evaluation protocol) was based on capacity building domains e.g., leadership, resource mobilization. It was pilot implemented in a research network on increasing an active lifestyle in various settings. The respective health promoters documented 78 meetings of 15 different stakeholder groups. We performed feedback interviews and member checking among the facilitating health promoters, asking for comprehensibility, length, usability and perceived benefits of the instrument. Findings: Data collected in the “EVA-protocol” helped the facilitating health promoters understand the development of competences and capacities in the stakeholder groups and identify factors that favor or hinder the capacity building process. The instrument was rated as user friendly, but it was remarked that it is best filled out by two persons and reflected upon by those to offer the greatest benefit. Not all projects could afford this procedure due to lack of time/staff resources. Conclusions: The drafted instrument can serve as quality management tool for health promoters who facilitate participatory stakeholder groups in different settings and intend to build capacities for sustainable health promotion structures.