Designing evaluations for a women's health education program

Explicitly incorporating women's health into the medical school curriculum is a relatively new process for educators. Moreover, until recently, no standard definition of women's health had been developed. Because there are no specific evaluation designs for women's health programs, evaluators must adapt existing evaluation concepts to fit the needs of the program. Evaluation is a broad concept that includes assessments of knowledge, skills, and attitudes to reach decisions about program improvements. The purpose of this article is to describe methods of evaluating women's health programs, including how to tailor basic evaluation concepts to the program. Several areas of women's health programming are discussed as background to creating; the innovative design for 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 obstacles to initiating women's health evaluations.