Evidence valued and used by health promotion practitioners

Area of Science:

• Health Promotion
• Evidence-Based Practice

Background:

• Evidence-based practice is crucial in health promotion.
• Disagreement exists on the types of evidence practitioners should utilize.
• Limited empirical understanding of how practitioners conceptualize and use evidence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore health promotion practitioners' purposes for using evidence.
• To identify the types of evidence practitioners value.
• To determine the qualities that make evidence useful in practice.

Main Methods:

• 58 semi-structured interviews and 250 hours of observation with 54 health promotion practitioners in New South Wales, Australia.
• Grounded Theory analysis of interview transcripts and observation field notes.

Main Results:

• Practitioners utilized evidence for both practical and strategic objectives.
• Four distinct types of evidence were valued based on relevance and utility.
• Ideal evidence originated from practice settings and met substantive and procedural criteria.

Conclusions:

• Health promotion practitioners employ a wide array of evidence due to their complex work.
• Organizational structures are needed to support practitioners in using diverse evidence effectively.