Community Participation in Health Promotion: Evaluation of the California Wellness Guide

With the rapid rise in health care costs, it has become imperative that departments of health services find effective and affordable ways to prevent disease and promote health. During the past 20 years, most of the major educational interventions in the US designed to prevent disease by changing behavior have not been as successful as expected. At the same time, there is increasing evidence that community participation, a central feature of the `new public health', is a powerful component of the programs that have been successful. In this paper, we describe and evaluate an intervention that heavily involves the community. The Wellness Guide is a comprehensive health promotion guide developed with community participation to improve the wellness knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of recipients. 100 000 copies of The Guide in English and a Spanish adaptation, La GuõÂa del Bienestar, were distributed to California participants in the US Gov-ernment nutrition program for low-income mothers and children (Women, Infants and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program, or WIC). Interviews from three