Assets based interventions: Evaluating and synthesizing evidence of the effectiveness of the assets based approach to health promotion

Abstract

The chapter is focused mainly on the intervention research and evaluation of actions aimed at strengthening and supporting health assets as a way of producing healthy communities and individuals. There is a need to re-think traditional assumptions related to evaluating the effectiveness of health interventions aimed at strengthening health assets as opposed to eliminating or curing diseases. Working from a concrete example of a 4-year collaborative project in Canada aimed at developing a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of community interventions to promote health and build community capacity. The chapter introduces a series of profound methodological challenges that this type of evaluation research presents, along with a discussion of the attempt to use a 'realist synthesis' approach to addressing these challenges. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.