Public health: Planning and evaluation

Introduction

The principles of public health promotion have been outlined in previous chapters within this textbook (see Chapter 3). The importance of planning prior to the development and subsequent implementation of any such public health interventions has been recognised for many decades (Kok, 1993) and continues to be considered critical to the effectiveness of a program (Thompson, Kent & Lyons, 2014). However, while appropriate evaluation of the intervention is as important as the initial planning, it is an often-overlooked aspect of program development (Green & Kreuter, 2005). Planning, implementation and evaluation should be viewed as three equally necessary and complementaiy components of any public health program.

This chapter provides an introduction to planning and evaluation with respect to public health promotions and interventions. Entire textbooks have been written on healthcare planning and evaluation (for example, Issel & Wells, 2017), so this chapter focuses primarily on overarching concepts. It identifies a simple, six-stage public health planning model that assists project teams to move from the initial identification of a need through implementation to assessment of the outcomes, with the evaluation also identifying any needs that remain partially or completely unmet. The concepts of planning and evaluation should be viewed as being part of a continuous process, with planning of public health interventions being informed by reviewing evaluations of previous projects, while the evaluation phase provides observations and recommendations for future programs. If evaluations are not carefully planned and undertaken, it may not be possible to establish whether the program actually achieved the desired public health outcomes. Consequently, valuable knowledge for follow-up interventions may be missed and the overall project may then not be adequately aligned with the needs of the community.