Health Education: Effectiveness, Efficiency and Equity

Since the first edition of this book was published, in 1990, health promotion has been enjoying an increasingly high profile both nationally and internationally. For this new edition, many chapters have been extensively revised or rewritten to take account of recent developments; new issues about health education are discussed and, as a result, the book provides a more comprehensive and critical review of health promotion and its relationship with health education. In addition to presenting detailed analysis of different models of health education and discussing implications for evaluation, a greater emphasis has been placed on the values and ideological issues permeating attempts to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of health education. The book argues the case for critically appraising the implicit and explicit values and associated ethical issues which are central to the process of evaluation. It also reiterates the importance of grounding evaluative research and health education programmes on a firm, explicit and coherent foundation of theory. This book should be of interest to health educators; psychologists; doctors; and nurses.