Post Health Promotion Fair Evaluation

Post Health Promotion Fair Evaluation

Within a week of the health fair, nurses should begin an evaluation process to determine how successful the fair was, identify things that went well and those things that need improvement.

Among things that nurses can do are:

• Utilize the patient assessment data to determine the proportion of healthy, at risk, symptomatic and ill individuals to get a better overall picture of the community's health status.
• Utilizing recorded names and addresses of fair participants, establish an approximate count of attendees to determine overall public interest and how well attended the fair was.
• Plot addresses on a map to determine where areas of greatest and least attendees came from.  Are there areas that seem largely under-served?  Would a different location be helpful for the next activity?
• Conduct a post-fair survey among patients at the clinic who attended the fair to determine public perception of the event and identify any issues or strengths.
• Open a suggestion box at the clinic for future topics at similar fairs
• Determine if "well woman" and family planning oriented visits increase in the month following the fair.  Participants may find something enjoyable but unless it leads to action and behavior modification, it is not serving the intended purpose.
• Conduct longer studies to see if health burdens in the designated area increase, decrease or stay stagnant.
• Assess if health education class attendance increases following the fair.
• Determine if peer mentor-ship increases.
• Follow up with participants who are serving as peers, as well as those receiving peer support, to determine overall perceptions and effectiveness of the peer program.

This is just a sample of ideas for evaluating the first step in the health promotion activities.  The important thing is that without evaluation and measurement of results it will be difficult to know if intended goals have been met.  Evaluation further identifies additional needs for future activities (Centers for Disease Control, 1999).

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