Hi !

I am a member of a International Working party on Evaluation of Health
promotion chaired by Irv Rootman from Toronto and supported by WHO
Euro , Health Canada CDC USA and HEA London. One of the aims of the
working party is to look at this whole issue and it has commissioned
papers form " experts " on a whole range of health promotion issues.
There is a background working paper and the aim is to produce a report
to be taken to WHO and to the next international conference on HP in
Dajkarta. One of things emerging is that RCT 's in some areas are
definitely not the way forward and are not a cost effective way of
analysing impact etc. One of the problems of the eviedence based
practice approach is it is dominated by the biomedical model whihc
draws its methods from the natural sciences. There is a whole welter of
more humanistic ( for want of a better term) developing in the social
sciences that are more appropropriate to social and human dimensions
of health promotion. Its important that those working in the field do not
allow biomedicine to dictate and ADVOCATE for altrnative methodolgies.
My colleague Lindsey Dugdill and I have written a paper published in
the Health Education Journal and the Journal of Contemporary health
published by our Institute ( references below)which addresses some of
the issues.

We are meeting again on June 12th in Toronto and I can report back on
my return to the UK . The references are :
Springett,J and Dugdill, L (1995)  Workplace Health
promotionprogrammes : towards a framework for Evaluation HEJ 55
 91-103
Springett, J Costongs, C and Dugdill, L (1995) towards a framework for
Evaluation in health promotion: Methodology Principles and Practice
Jounral of Contemporary health 2 61-65

You will see our address on our WWW page.

Jane Springett
Reader in Health
Institute for Health
Liverpool John Moores University