Importance of Evaluating Health Promotion Programs

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Introduction
Evaluation refers to the act of making judgments concerning quantity or value of an entity.
However, evaluation itself is a great process and it entails collection and analysis of information
concerning program activities, features and the relevant outcomes to the program in progress. Its
main role is to carry out judgements concerning a particular program in order to improve its
effectiveness or try to inform decisions in programming. Evaluation is a very important process
and it comprise of various steps that include; implementation, program planning, termination,
dissemination and lastly implementation. However, this paper mainly describes the four
evaluation types which are formative evaluation, process evaluation, impact evaluation and
outcome evaluation (Davidson et.al, 2018).
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Importance of evaluating health promotion programs.
It helps in monitoring progress towards the program’s goals.
Monitoring and evaluation are of great importance and they help in ensuring that the agreed
health activities are implemented as planned, this evaluation and monitoring helps assess
whether the desired results are being attained. Monitoring is mainly used in tracking
implementations and outputs systematically together with measuring the effectiveness of
programs. I addition, it aids in determination of the exact time when the program will be on track
and when need for changes will arise. In health sector, monitoring evaluation (M & E) entails
storing, collecting, analyzing and transformation of data into a strategic information so that it can
be used to make greatly informed decisions in program management and improvement, advocacy
and finally policy formulation (Moktar et.al, 2018).

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It helps determine whether the program components are producing the desire progress on
outcomes.
In health sector, evaluation is of great importance and it is great used to carry out numerous
check ups on the progress of all the programs. It is a tool that is used to see though the and point
out the extend to which the program. During determination of the program’s success through the
generated outcomes, we use numerous reasons to measure outcomes and they include measuring
of the intervention effectiveness, identification of effective program practices, identification of
practices that call for program improvements, proving one’s values to funders and finally
obtaining clarity and consensus around the program’s objective.
Evaluation of health promotion programs helps in justifying the need for further financial
support.
Financial sourcing and spending all depend on good preparations and evaluation of programs. On
evaluating the health promotion program, one can be able estimate the amount of money to
spend. Once the expenditure budget appears relatively higher than the planned budget upon
evaluation, then one is able to make adjustments where applicable, for example, he or she may
find ways on other different sources where they can be able to get support financially. Evaluation
process will also help in minimizing cases of overspending where not necessary. The health
sector can access financial support from sources like public through taxes and also non-
governmental organizations. Identification of these financing methods which may also influence
how costs of health care are distributed is attributed by thorough evaluation of these health
programs (Davidson et.al, 2018).

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It ensures that productive program keep on running and resources are not used in funding
ineffective programs.
Proper evaluation of health promotion program will improve efficiency and cost effectiveness of
activities carried out in health sectors. This will also ensure proper utilization and sourcing of
resources which will promote steady running of day today activities. Once these programs are
evaluated, it will also prevent cases of spending on non-helpful programs which may result to
misunderstanding among health sector members. Evaluation of healthcare greatly helps in
allocation of resources to the most productive projects only among the numerous competing
groups of programs and people too. However, physicians easily determine access to healthcare,
giving out viable solutions to allocation problems calls for the development of new model of the
actual physician relationship with the patient.
Types of evaluation and their importance in health promotion programming
Formative evaluation
This form of evaluation occurs when program development and implementation is in progress. It
mainly gives out a feedback when someone achieves the goals of the program or may be
improving your programs. The importance of formative evaluation is that it aids in meeting
numerous challenges up to a valid implementation and its own study that is scientific. This
facilitates the integration of findings in research into practice and patients care improvements
(Petrice et.al, 2018).
Process evaluation