6. Monitoring and Evaluation

This section will help you determine if your plan:

1. Is well implemented.
2. Achieves the measurable objectives you have set.
3. Contributes to your overall health promotion program goals.

6.1 Monitoring Implementation

In Sections 5.1, 5.3 and 5.5, you identified activities you are about to implement.

In each case, you should report:

• If the action/activity was completed and when.
• If it was on time and why (or why not).
• If it required the human, material and financial resources allocated.
• The number of individuals reached.
• Their profile versus the intended audience.
• What was done well and less well.
• What you have learned.
• Recommended adjustments to the activity and/or plan.

You should consider monitoring implementation on an ongoing basis with brief progress reports on a monthly basis for the first few months.

6.2 Progress in Terms of Measurable Objectives

Your activities were strategically chosen to help achieve the measurable objectives you set in Section 4.

During the first year, report at least twice on progress made. Progress reports will help reinforce the commitment of team members and partners. They also serve as a reminder of why you are involved in these activities. In some instances, progress reports may even lead you to reconsider your choice of activities and/or partners.

The methodologies outlined in Section 2 can be used to monitor progress in terms of measurable objectives. Use the statistics from your audience analysis as baseline data.

6.3 Progress in Terms of Health Promotion Program Goals

By engaging in social marketing, advocacy, community development and/or other approaches, you have made the assumption that the combined results of your efforts would lead to significant change.

Social marketing activities cannot easily be separated from all other initiatives and uncontrollable influences on your overall health promotion or behaviour change goals. Although a separate evaluation of social marketing activities is possible, it would require sophisticated methodologies and significant budgets that are rarely available to local organizations.

However, your evaluation reports should contain a section on the relative contribution of your social marketing activities to the overall program. Evaluations should also explain how other factors may have influenced outcomes, and may influence future social marketing activities.