Critical Analysis of Health Intervention and Program Evaluation Report

This report critically analyzes a health promotion intervention focused on encouraging children in New South Wales to walk to school, referencing the Ottawa Charter's principles. The intervention, which took place from 2001 to 2014, aimed to increase physical activity among school children. The report evaluates the intervention's alignment with the Ottawa Charter's strategies, including building public policy, creating supportive environments, strengthening community action, developing personal skills, reorienting health services, and moving towards the future. It highlights the intervention's strengths, such as its attempts to build public health policy and reorient health services, while noting weaknesses like the limited focus on developing personal skills and equity issues. The report also offers recommendations, including behavioral change, educational, and societal change approaches, to improve future health promotion interventions and increase their effectiveness. The analysis is based on a case study that implemented only partial strategies provided by the Ottawa Charter, and showed limited equality by the end of the intervention.

Running head: INTERVENTION AND EVALUATION OF PROGRAM
Intervention and program evaluation
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author’s name

1INTERVENTION AND EVALUATION OF PROGRAM
Introduction
The research paper that has been selected discusses about the physical activity of children of
New South Wales through the walking as a mode of travel off students from home to school.
According to the paper, students who travel to schools in New South Wales, there has been a
decline in the walking as a mode of travel. The paper has compared Australian students to that of
European students where 70% of children walk to school. The purpose of this assignment is to
evaluate the health promotion intervention which has been stated in the research paper with
reference to the Ottawa Charter. The interventions that are discussed in the paper aims to
encourage the lifestyle physical activity of the school going children of New South Wales.
Principles of Ottawa Charter
According to WHO, the Ottawa Charter consists of six principles or strategies.
 Building health public policy
Health promotion prefers giving more priorities to the health care. The Ottawa
Charter prefers health as the main priority and puts it in the list of policy makers in all
regions and at all stages, and enables them to direct their focus towards awareness of the
consequences of their health decisions and to admit their accountabilities for
health(WHO, 2019).
 Creating supportive environments
The current society where all the individuals are living in is a complicated and
integrated place. Health is a dependable thing which relies on different goals and it
cannot be separated from them. The complicated relation among the individuals and their

2INTERVENTION AND EVALUATION OF PROGRAM
environment establishes the origin of the socio-ecological method for health (WHO,
2019).
 Strengthening community actions
Promotion of health can work better through the effective action and
strengthening of the community during the decision-making procedures, planning
strategies, and executing them to receive better health (WHO, 2019).
 Developing personal skills
Improvement of health assists individual and collective progress through
delivering knowledge, information of health, and improving life skill abilities. By doing
so, it enhances the choices accessible to individuals to manage their own health and over
their surroundings, and to take proper decisions beneficial to health (WHO, 2019).
 Reorienting health services
The duties for the enhancement of health in healthcare service area are mutual
between people, small or large groups, health specialists, healthcare institutions and
governments. They need to work collectively for the healthcare system which will help in
contributing towards the recreation of health. Reorienting health services will need
sturdier focus towards health research as well as amendments towards specialized
learning and exercise (WHO, 2019).
 Moving towards Future
Caring, holism and ecology are vital problems in emerging approaches for health
improvement. Thus, the participants should consider a supervisory belief that, in each

3INTERVENTION AND EVALUATION OF PROGRAM
stage of design, execution and assessment of health improvement events, each gender
should have equal contribution (WHO, 2019).
Analysis of the Intervention in relation to the Charter Principles
The paper discusses about the approach of physical activities which are required for the
promotion of health in children. From 2001 to 2014, the action launched and proceeded to
evaluate the kids and to conduct a population-based telephonic based study of randomly chosen
families of junior school-age kids. This intervention which was suggested in the paper used most
of the strategies of the Ottawa Charter. Since the primary aim of the intervention was to improve
the health of children by doing physical activities(Merom et al., 2005).
This intervention helped in building public health policy by involving all the primary
schools in NSW. The action consisted of observing institutions enrolling to participate over four
years and assessing school feedback in 2002 as well as a population-based telephonic study of
randomly chosen families of junior school-age kids. Through this way the intervention tried to
unify every individual and tried to build a public health policy. The intervention aimed at
protecting the health of individuals and communities. The intervention also focused on
reorienting the health services by using many local programs to encourage children to walk to
school. There were mass-media campaigns which were effective in raising awareness,
knowledge, and attitude. This assisted in increasing the ability of individuals to take healthy
decisions while staying in a healthy environment. Only thing that was lacking in this intervention
was that it did not focus on developing the personal or social skills(Merom et al., 2005).

4INTERVENTION AND EVALUATION OF PROGRAM
Analysis of the Intervention in relation to Equity
Even if there were equality between the men and women during the intervention, there is
evidence that it was just for a short-duration. According to the outcome of the study, it was seen
that in 2004, only 53% of primary schools had contributed in the program of Walk Safely to
School Day (WSTSD) at least once and 15% had contributed for duration of at least three long
years. Schools which took part in the WSTSD for the road safety programs, and other 59% of
schools discussed about the WSTSD program in the school meetings, but only some of the
schools around 7% planned for events related to walking. According to some parents around one
fourth or 24% of NSW school students took part in WSTSD events, comprising extra 31% more
students who walked to school during the WSTSD comparing to other normal days. Thus it
resulted in a short-term change in the walking behavior. This showed that there was less amount
of equality during the intervention procedure (Merom et al., 2005).
Recommendations
There are certain other approaches which can be taken to improve lifestyle physical activity of
the students focusing on the strategies of the Ottawa Charter.
 Behavioral change approach - The behavioral change intervention is focused upon
changing and motivating a person’s attitude and behavior so that they can adapt to a
healthy lifestyle. This intervention will be obliged to inspire maximum number of people
to adopt a healthy lifestyle which will help them promote their health (Janssen,
Regenmortel & Abma, 2014).
 Education approach -The aim of the educational intervention is to deliver people with
abundant knowledge, confirm that they understand each health problem, and will help

5INTERVENTION AND EVALUATION OF PROGRAM
them to take proper decisions for their health. Health knowledge is delivered to
individuals and are provided assistance for them to individually discover their beliefs and
perspectives to help them decide their own choices (Janssen, Regenmortel & Abma,
2014).
 Societal change approach - Rather than trying to alter the attitude of people, the societal
change intervention amends the physical and social surrounding to make it favorable for
the betterment of health. Individuals who will follow this approach will be determined in
putting health as a political schema at all phases and will modify the shape of health
environment as a replacement for the individual lives (Janssen, Regenmortel & Abma,
2014).
Conclusion
It was seen that the case study had implemented only partial amount of strategies which were
provided by the Ottawa Charter. There was only 50% equality by the end of the time of
intervention.

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REFERENCES
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Fry, D., &Zask, A. (2016).Applying the Ottawa Charter to inform health promotion programme
design. Health promotion international, 32(5), 901-912.
Janssen, B. M., Van Regenmortel, T., &Abma, T. A. (2014). Balancing risk prevention and
health promotion: towards a harmonizing approach in care for older people in the
community. Health Care Analysis, 22(1), 82-102.
Langford, R., Bonell, C., Jones, H., & Campbell, R. (2015). Obesity prevention and the Health
promoting Schools framework: essential components and barriers to
success. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 12(1), 15.
McBride, K. A., MacMillan, F., George, E. S., & Steiner, G. Z. (2019).Health promotion and
social determinants of health. Social Determinants of Health, 131-152.
Merom, D., Rissel, C., Mahmic, A., & Bauman, A. (2005).Process evaluation of the New South
Wales Walk Safely to School Day. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 16(2), 100-
106.
The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. (2019). Retrieved 6 September 2019, from
https://www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/previous/ottawa/en/index1.html