Public health professionals evaluate EURALIM, a European information campaign on diet and nutrition

Objective: To assess how public health professionals evaluate a mass information campaign on European differences on exposure to risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Design: EURALIM, a collaborative public health project, pooled and harmonised data on cardiovascular disease risk factors from seven European surveys and presented selected results in a brochure. During a European information campaign in Spring 1998, 60,000 brochures were distributed through public health professionals to the general public, with the aim to improve public awareness of existing gender differences in risk factor distributions and prevalences across different populations. The information campaign was evaluated by sending a questionnaire to 1,444 public health professionals. Setting: France, Italy, Northern Ireland (UK), Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands Results: Participation was low (21%) but results of the survey were strikingly consistent across the seven study centres. Most respondents stated that the projectis main objectives were fairly well or to a great deal attained (87%) and the brochure comprehensible and useful to them (77%). On the other hand 57% of the respondents rated the brochure as too complicated for the general public; 73% thought the general public would not be interested in European comparisons. Conclusions: Lessons of the present study can help design valid evaluation campaigns. The brochure was appropriately targeted to public health professionals. We were not able to determine whether it was well suited for the general public because we did not directly seek their opinion. Even though participation was low, the consistency of the opinions expressed by international public S. Beer-Borst