DESIGNING EVALUATIONS FOR A WOMENS HEALTH-EDUCATION PROGRAM

Explicitly incorporating women's health into the medical school curric ulum is a relatively new process for educators. Moreover, until recent ly, no standard definition of women's health had been developed. Becau se there are no specific evaluation designs for women's health program s, evaluators must adapt existing evaluation concepts to fit the needs of the program. Evaluation is a broad concept that includes assessmen ts of knowledge, skills, and attitudes to reach decisions about progra m improvements. The purpose of this article is to describe methods of evaluating women's health programs, including how to tailor basic eval uation concepts to the program. Several areas of women's health progra mming are discussed as background to creating the innovative design fo r this new program evaluation. An example of an evaluation design for a totally integrated women's health curriculum is presented, including some preliminary data and a discussion of strategies for overcoming o bstacles to initiating women's health evaluations.