‘Lenzgesund’: A Long-Term Community Health Promotion Programme in a Deprived Neighbourhood and Its Evaluation

Abstract

The contribution will present a highly visible health promotion programme in a deprived urban neighbourhood, initiated in 2004 by the health authority of the Hamburgian district Eimsbüttel. Its focus was on capacity building in cooperation with local actors/parties and residents. During 2005 and 2017, the programme, called ‘Lenzgesund’, was researched by a team of the Institute of Medical Sociology. The research aimed at giving feedback to the actors about how well they achieved their goals. For this purpose, we had to develop and test new approaches to evaluation. KEQ (Kapazitätsentwicklung im Quartier/capacity building in residential quarters/neighbourhoods) is the acronym of a newly developed questionnaire for measuring community capacities being considered as relevant for health. KEQ can be seen as an intermediate outcome parameter for health promotion programmes and activities on the community level. Another innovative approach to evaluation was an audit of the programme through experts from outside Hamburg in order to have a more neutral external view. The first paragraphs will present the practical programme and its development in phases from 2004 to 2012. In the second part, we will give a short account of the two main approaches to long-term evaluation of the programme.