Using the PAHO Guide for Documenting Health Promotion Initiatives

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.