Community Health Education and Promotion: A Guide to Program Design and Evaluation; Mary Ellen Wurzbach, Consulting Editor. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers, Inc; 2002. 660 pages, paperback, $54.00.
The purpose of this book is to provide practical guidance for the student of community health, health education, or health promotion about the design, development, and evaluation of programs in the community. The 9 chapters cannot be neatly categorized, so they will be listed: Development of Health Education and Promotion, Personnel Management, Community Assessment and Mobilization, Culturally Competent Health Promotion, Developing Successful Programs, Creating and Tailoring Effective Materials, Publicizing Your Program, Program Evaluation, and Adapting to Diverse Audiences in Different Settings.
There are also 3 Appendixes, all of which I found to be useful and were good selections for supplementing the content of this book: Professional Organizations for the Health Educator, The Internet and Other Resources, and Healthy People 2010: Summary of Goals and Objectives.
The author, referred to as the Consulting Editor, is generous with her use of sample program materials, charts, and worksheets throughout the book. Also, each of the chapters begins with a few objectives, and by the end of each chapter these objectives are largely achieved. The content is up-to-date, accurate, and comprehensive.
Throughout the book are useful lists, such as Eight Tips for Effective Meetings, How the Public Perceives Health Messages, General Principles of Adult Education, and Reaching Blue-Collar Workers. There are also good anecdotes on project development, with my favorites being the development of a cancer video for St. Paul, Minnesota's Hmong immigrant population, and blood pressure screening and health care information distributed at an African American beauty shop.
Two criticisms of this book are a scarcity of analytical critique on the information it presents and an uneven distribution of content. One example of inadequate critique occurs in chapter one, in what is basically a good overview of Healthy People 2000 and 2010 and which includes recent data on progress being made on some of the leading health indicators. There is no analysis, however, on the discouraging data that has been collected on some of our major risk factors, such as increasing overweight/obesity in this country, during all 3 Healthy People initiatives, the overall lack of success we have had with increasing physical activity, and the inability to further lower smoking rates.
An example of uneven distribution of content is the 50 pages on coalition building in chapter three, the entire chapter four (83 pages long) devoted to culturally competent health promotion-including 11 pages on the translation of written materials, 33 pages on teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases; versus 6 pages on promoting physical activity, 2 pages on nutrition, a half-page on reaching older Americans, and nothing on stress management.
Compared to similar books, I thought a subsection on focus groups and the chapter on Culturally Competent Health Promotion were particularly strong. Conversely, I thought the chapter on Program Evaluation was disappointing in that it skimmed over too much of the material-though I did appreciate a subsection on the adequacy of control groups. And the entire book is devoid of health behavior change theory, which is odd in that good theory informs good community health education and promotion programs.
As someone who has not been formally trained in health education, I apparently have not been sufficiently indoctrinated in the utility of complex planning models such as PATCH, PRECEDE, and PROCEED (limited space prevents me from fleshing out these cumbersome acronyms) that seems to be required for these types of books. I was relieved to find out that there was only one intricate chart relating to one of these models (it was labeled: PATCH: Mobilizing Vertical and Horizontal Communications and Support among the National, Regional, and Community Levels).
Overall, I would have no hesitancy using this book for a community health education class. It has some outstanding chapters, and an abundance of good materials. However, I would have to supplement some of the underdeveloped sections of this book.