Vlog about stakeholders engagement in PEN

Two PhD students, Janine Wendt and Daniel Scheller, from the project “Policy Evaluation Network (PEN) - Public policies addressing health-related behaviours in Europe” planned to address the “Theory of Change” (ToC) approach in their inspiration session. This approach is typically used to design and evaluate public health interventions, and would be introduced as a stakeholder-centred approach in policy implementation evaluation.

PEN aims to evaluate policy measures to promote a healthy diet and physical activity for the population in terms of content, implementation and effectiveness of policies. In PEN they use the ToC-approach to identify key implementation processes, facilitators and barriers together in the discussion with stakeholders. The ToC-approach attempts to overcome the gaps between research, practice and among stakeholders from different settings. Therefore, PEN put into action ToC-workshops in which stakeholders pursuing the same goal can discuss together in a supportive environment. During the ToC-workshops key factors of policy implementation as well as barriers and facilitators can be examined and are depicted in so-called ToC-maps. Following the workshops continuous feedback combined with subsequent meetings leads to stakeholders engagement over a long-term period. An iterative process can be established to monitor and guide the implementation of policies in a chosen area of interest.