Support Fund external evaluation

The PATH Support Fund projects were rigorously evaluated over three years (2004-2007) by an external consortium commissioned by PATH and ASH Scotland, resulting in the final report entitled 'Evaluating the impact of the National Partnership Action on Tobacco & Health (PATH) Support Fund on Smoking Cessation Services for Pregnant Women and People Facing Inequalities'.

The external evaluation was carried out by:

• Scottish Centre for Social Research (formerly Scottish Health Feedback): Lyn Jones, Fenella Hayes 
• Institute for Social Marketing  - University of Stirling: Susan MacAskill, Martine Stead and Kathryn Angus
• Public Health Sciences Section  - The University of Edinburgh: Dr. Amanda Amos

The evaluation had three parts - a process, outcome and programme evaluation. The main objectives were to:

• capture the individual stories of the projects and their impact on the target groups 
• assess the effectiveness of the different approaches in terms of smoking cessation
• assess the effectiveness of the funded projects as a whole.

The Executive Summary (9 pages, 601Kb pdf) and the Final Report (159 pages, 1.48Mb pdf) of the external evaluation team are available as pdf files for downloading.

Susan MacAskill presented the evaluators' findings in a PowerPoint presentation at the UK National Smoking Cessation Conference, held in London, June 2007.