Mapping European Capacity to Engage in Health Promotion at the National Level: HP-Source.net

Speller et al. present elsewhere in this issue a simple four stage framework for a systematic approach to getting evidence about health promotion effectiveness into practice.This paper examines the third stage of this framework, which is centred on capacity.The underlying premise is that systematic data collection is required to fill the knowledge gap surrounding capacity for health promotion in the countries of Europe.It is recognised that mapping capacity of a country to undertake health promotion is a complex task, but that a proven model for doing so is now available (IUHPE, 2004).Importantly, the process of capacity mapping provides not only needed information but also serves as a catalyst for action.The challenge is to expand capacity mapping to eventually include all European countries, using approaches that permit comparisons Capacity building