Global Handbook on Noncommunicable Diseases and Health Promotion David V. McQueen, editor A scan of health challenges around the globe readily brings to mind a range of infectious illnesses, from HIV to influenza. Yet chronic non-contagious conditions--heart disease, asthma, diabetes, cancer--are more prevalent, and their rates soaring, across the developed and developing worlds. The Global Handbook on Noncommunicable Diseases and Health Promotion is an important resource for understanding and approaching chronic illnesses and their prevention. This timely text balances theory and strategies to provide an integrative context for health-affecting behaviors regarding tobacco use, food choices, and physical activity. Coverage expands on current medical/clinical public health perspectives, arguing that closer attention to social context is crucial to better use of health resources and more relevant preventive efforts. Possible roles for hospitals, the workplace, government agencies, NGOs, and other institutions are analyzed, as is the potential for addressing larger underlying health factors (e.g., inequities and poverty) at the societal level. Topics covered include: The nature of causality: beyond traditional evidence Learning from the social sciences in chronic disease health promotion Contextual factors in health and illness Understanding and applying a social determinants of health framework for addressing NCDs Public health, NCDs, health promotion and business partnering NCDs and civil society: a history and a roadmap As the authors of the Global Handbook on Noncommunicable Diseases and Health Promotion make abundantly clear, opportunities are as numerous as the issues, and researchers and graduate students in global public health, health promotion, and chronic disease epidemiology will find these chapters positive and realistic.p>

This book contains the latest information on surveillance by the international public health community, including: the WHO's Stepwise Approach, the U.S.'s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the Finbalt Health Monitor, the EURALIM Experience, and the Mega Country Health Promotion Network. It is for those involved in planning or conducting chronic disease risk factor surveillance and for those interested in developing a global network of persons involved in this arena.

Pandemics, substance abuse, natural disasters, obesity, and warfare: these are not only health crises but social crises as well. Now a panel of leaders in global health explores the vital but understudied social theories behind the practice of health promotion, including cultural capital, risk and causality, systems theory, and the dynamic between individual and community.

This work is a critical reflection on the state of health promotion effectiveness in practice around the world. It examines the meaning of health promotion from regional perspectives, and explores regional strengths and weaknesses in demonstrating effectiveness. The book goes on to consider issues in public health such as tobacco, mental health, obesity, urbanization, war, and social determinants in order to assess the role of effectiveness, and to examine methodologies for demonstrating effectiveness. Finally, the book looks at questions over the effectiveness of health promotion - the debate about the relationship between evidence, impact, and outcomes.

More and more, health promotion is a crucial component of public health, to the extent that public health interventions are called on to prove their effectiveness and appraised for scientific validity, a practice many in the field consider self-defeating. Health Promotion Evaluation Practices in the Americas cogently demonstrates that scientific rigor and the goals of health promotion are less in conflict than commonly thought, synthesizing multiple traditions from countries throughout North, Central, and South America (and across the developed-to-developing-world continuum) for a volume that is both diverse in scope and unified in purpose.

The book's examples-representing robust theoretical and practical literatures as well as initiatives from Rio de Janeiro to American Indian communities-explain why health promotion evaluation projects require different guidelines from mainstream evaluative work. The editors identify core humanitarian principles associated with health promotion (participation, empowerment, equity, sustainability, intersectoral action, multistrategy, and contextualism), while chapters highlight challenges that must be mastered to keep these principles and scientific objectives in sync, including: (1) Building health promotion values into evaluation research projects. (2) Expanding the use of evaluation in health promotion. (3) Developing meaningful evaluation questions. (4) Distinguishing between community-based participation research and evaluation-based participation. (5) Evaluating specifically for equity. (6) Designing initiatives to foster lasting social change.

The applied knowledge in Health Promotion Evaluation Practices in the Americas: Values and Research can bring the goals of intervention into sharper focus for practitioners, evaluators, and decision-makers and facilitate communication on all sides-necessary steps to progress from study findings to real-world action.

Global Handbook on Noncommunicable Diseases and Health Promotion David V. McQueen, editor A scan of health challenges around the globe readily brings to mind a range of infectious illnesses, from HIV to influenza. Yet chronic non-contagious conditions--heart disease, asthma, diabetes, cancer--are more prevalent, and their rates soaring, across the developed and developing worlds. The Global Handbook on Noncommunicable Diseases and Health Promotion is an important resource for understanding and approaching chronic illnesses and their prevention. This timely text balances theory and strategies to provide an integrative context for health-affecting behaviors regarding tobacco use, food choices, and physical activity. Coverage expands on current medical/clinical public health perspectives, arguing that closer attention to social context is crucial to better use of health resources and more relevant preventive efforts. Possible roles for hospitals, the workplace, government agencies, NGOs, and other institutions are analyzed, as is the potential for addressing larger underlying health factors (e.g., inequities and poverty) at the societal level. Topics covered include: The nature of causality: beyond traditional evidence Learning from the social sciences in chronic disease health promotion Contextual factors in health and illness Understanding and applying a social determinants of health framework for addressing NCDs Public health, NCDs, health promotion and business partnering NCDs and civil society: a history and a roadmap As the authors of the Global Handbook on Noncommunicable Diseases and Health Promotion make abundantly clear, opportunities are as numerous as the issues, and researchers and graduate students in global public health, health promotion, and chronic disease epidemiology will find these chapters positive and realistic.p>

This book contains the latest information on surveillance by the international public health community, including: the WHO's Stepwise Approach, the U.S.'s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the Finbalt Health Monitor, the EURALIM Experience, and the Mega Country Health Promotion Network. It is for those involved in planning or conducting chronic disease risk factor surveillance and for those interested in developing a global network of persons involved in this arena.

This work is a critical reflection on the state of health promotion effectiveness in practice around the world. It examines the meaning of health promotion from regional perspectives, and explores regional strengths and weaknesses in demonstrating effectiveness. The book goes on to consider issues in public health such as tobacco, mental health, obesity, urbanization, war, and social determinants in order to assess the role of effectiveness, and to examine methodologies for demonstrating effectiveness. Finally, the book looks at questions over the effectiveness of health promotion - the debate about the relationship between evidence, impact, and outcomes.

More and more, health promotion is a crucial component of public health, to the extent that public health interventions are called on to prove their effectiveness and appraised for scientific validity, a practice many in the field consider self-defeating. Health Promotion Evaluation Practices in the Americas cogently demonstrates that scientific rigor and the goals of health promotion are less in conflict than commonly thought, synthesizing multiple traditions from countries throughout North, Central, and South America (and across the developed-to-developing-world continuum) for a volume that is both diverse in scope and unified in purpose.

The book's examples-representing robust theoretical and practical literatures as well as initiatives from Rio de Janeiro to American Indian communities-explain why health promotion evaluation projects require different guidelines from mainstream evaluative work. The editors identify core humanitarian principles associated with health promotion (participation, empowerment, equity, sustainability, intersectoral action, multistrategy, and contextualism), while chapters highlight challenges that must be mastered to keep these principles and scientific objectives in sync, including: (1) Building health promotion values into evaluation research projects. (2) Expanding the use of evaluation in health promotion. (3) Developing meaningful evaluation questions. (4) Distinguishing between community-based participation research and evaluation-based participation. (5) Evaluating specifically for equity. (6) Designing initiatives to foster lasting social change.

The applied knowledge in Health Promotion Evaluation Practices in the Americas: Values and Research can bring the goals of intervention into sharper focus for practitioners, evaluators, and decision-makers and facilitate communication on all sides-necessary steps to progress from study findings to real-world action.

Pandemics, substance abuse, natural disasters, obesity, and warfare: these are not only health crises but social crises as well. Now a panel of leaders in global health explores the vital but understudied social theories behind the practice of health promotion, including cultural capital, risk and causality, systems theory, and the dynamic between individual and community.

Policy-makers, professionals of all kinds and the general public increasingly recognise social and economic factors as important determinants of health. Because health promotion approaches address these factors, they can play an increasingly valuable role in protecting and improving health. At the same time, funding sources increasingly demand evidence that initiatives give value for money. Health promotion initiatives need effective evaluation to realise their potential: both to prove their value as investments and to increase their effectiveness in achieving their aims. To help meet this need, the WHO European Working Group on Health Promotion Evaluation examined the current range of qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods to provide guidance to policy-makers and practitioners. This book is the result. It comprises an extensive compilation and discussion of the theory, methodologies and practice of evaluating health promotion initiatives in Europe and the Americas. The book takes three perspectives in examining the issues. It includes a retrospective examination of the evolution of health promotion evaluation. This provides the context for assessing and understanding the current state of evaluations of initiatives addressing settings, polices and systems works for promoting health. Finally the chapter authors and the Working Group as a whole make many recommendations for improvement that provide a look into the future. This book shows how a health promotion approach offers a comprehensive framework for planning and implementing interventions that can effectively address today's major health-related problems. The authors describe how good evaluations assist initiatives in achieving their goals, provide a wealth of guidance on how to undertake them and call for greater investment in the evaluation of health promotion. The authors hope that their work will stimulate policy-makers and practitioners to invest in and undertake good evaluation for good health promotion. This is their commitment; they hope that readers share it.