Using the PAHO Guide for Documenting Health Promotion Initiatives

1. Using the PAHO Guide for Documenting Health Promotion Initiatives

2. What is Health Promotion? • Health promotion is “a process of enabling people to increase control over their health.” • Health promotion is a way of thinking and working that considers the continual advancement and maintenance of individual and population health to be integral to the functioning of a community. • Health promotion focuses on the social determinants of health as well as on specific health issues.

3. What is Health Promotion? (continued) • Health promotion is • Population based • Participatory • Intersectoral • Context-sensitive • Multi-level

4. What is the PAHO Guide for Documenting Health Promotion Initiatives? • The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Documentation Guide’s primary purpose is to create a simple, standard format to help support documentation of health promotion initiatives. • The Guide is a seven-part questionnaire, asking for information about your effort. • The Documentation Guide helps create a record of the entire health promotion effort – the process of planning, designing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining it.

5. Why should you use the guide? • To contribute to a data base that will advance the field of health promotion. • To connect with others in the field, both in your own and other countries. • To empower participants in your initiative, and engage them in learning new skills by involving them in data collection through participatory action research. • To help you better understand your strengths and pinpoint areas to improve, making your work more effective through a careful analysis of your effort.

6. Why should you use the guide? (continued) • To get a new perspective on your effort, and come up with new ideas. • To describe the accomplishments of your effort and raise your profile in the community and with funders and other supporters. • To help ensure that health promotion becomes integral to the idea of community health. • You’ll get your work published on the PAHO website, and perhaps in an international journal as well.

7. Who should use the guide? • Any individual, group, or institution conducting an initiative for the promotion of health or healthy communities in the Americas, including: • NGOs (non-governmental organizations) or CBOs (community-based organizations) engaged in health and human service work. • Local, state, or national health or human service agencies. • Ministries or departments of public health at all levels. • Community health activists. • Healthy community initiatives.

8. Who should use the guide? (continued) • Faith communities. • Health Impact Assessment teams. • Environmental groups. • Individuals or organizations working to provide affordable housing for marginalized individuals and families, including those who are homeless. • Those working to change environmental conditions (help people gain access to clean drinking water, etc.) to eradicate disease.

9. How do you use the Guide? • Answer the questions and fill out the charts, thinking carefully about each. • Use the resulting description to: • Submit to PAHO, in order to contribute to the documentation of health promotion efforts in the Americas. • Gain recognition and credibility in the field. • Inform the community or region about your work. • Analyze your program, determining where changes need to be made, what areas should be emphasized and strengthened, and where additional resources are needed. • Pass on what you have learned – about both what works and what doesn’t – to others who can then replicate (reproduce) your work. • Present a successful effort as an example of a best practice or process. • Convince funders of the effectiveness or potential of your work.