Recent developments in health promotion have underscored the need to provide richer descriptions of health promotion programs. In parallel, there has been a call for the development and implementation of programs that are more ecological (i.e., directed at a variety of targets, in a host of settings). While the ecological perspective has been shown to be useful for the formulation of more far-reaching intervention strategies, a systematic tool for describing the degree of integration of the ecological perspective in health promotion programs has proven to be elusive. To this end, we report on the elaboration of an analytical procedure to assess the integration of the ecological approach in health promotion programs. The protocol hinges on classifying intervention activities as a function of their targets (e.g., individuals, persons other than the ultimate target or small groups, organizations, communities, political players/systems), their strategy for change (i.e., sequence of arrangement of target(s) and the links between them), and their delivery setting. The protocol is applied to intervention activity descriptions drawn from a comprehensive heart health program, the North Karelia Project. For example, in an anti-smoking intervention implemented in local schools, the protocol allows the coder to identify the setting as school where one activity intends to change the students' peers and another, to change teachers so that these intermediaries may act upon the students ultimately being targeted. We conclude that this analytical protocol is useful for characterizing intervention activities from archival data and hence, for assessing the ecologicalness of a health promotion program.
Keywords: Community-Based Health Promotion, Intervention
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.