The utility of stakeholder involvement in the evaluation of community-based health promotion programmes

Abstract

Community-based health promotion programmes (CBHPPs) deal with cross cutting issues (social, economic, environmental) and utilise issue-based, population-based and setting-based approaches in programme planning, implementation and evaluation with the aim of empowering individuals and communities to gain control over the determinants of health. This multifaceted nature of CBHPPs has resulted in a number of questions particularly regarding the level of stakeholder involvement in evaluating such programmes. Evaluation is seen as one of the ways to provide evidence to inform health promotion decision-making and practice. Community programme implementers and lay people have lamented that evaluations are often imposed on them without recognition for the uniqueness of their community, its programmes, resources and skills. The aim of this paper is to critically examine the utility of stakeholder involvement in the evaluation of CBHPPs. We first explore the nature of CBHPPs and the methods of gathering evidence via evaluation. This is followed by a critical examination of the value of stakeholder involvement in evaluating CBHPPs. The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion is used to conceptualise the paper with specific examples of stakeholder involvement in evaluation of CBHPPs used to support our arguments. The paper concludes that stakeholder involvement in evaluation of CBHPPs is of importance considering the empowerment and participation values of health promotion. As evaluation is done with people and not on people, stakeholder involvement should be central to the evaluation of CBHPPs rather than adopting an approach whereby the researcher is completely detached from the programme stakeholders particularly the community.