Environmental health services in Europe 5. Guidelines for evaluation of environmental health services

This publication aims to fill a gap identified by Member States: to provide a practical introduction for environmental health professionals and managers to evaluate their services. The first task is to review the most critical components and aim of an evaluation, to see how these relate to the overall framework of environmental health service management.

Evaluation of health services is an established field. Several books and reports have been published on the subject, both inside and outside of WHO. This publication does not intend to rewrite these documents or restate their arguments. Its goal is to introduce environmental health professionals to evaluation principles, tools and examples from which they can pick and choose elements to suit their specific needs.

The book is designed to guide practitioners towards questions that must be answered to evaluate and improve services. With this in mind, references and suggestions for further reading appear at the end of each chapter, and key recommendations are presented in boxes throughout the text.