[Complex health promotion community interventions with children : Evaluation using examples from a rural (Ortenaukreis) and an urban region (Lenzviertel Hamburg)].

This article focuses the challenges of evaluating complex health promotion interventions in community settings. On the basis of two examples - the Präventionsnetzwerk Ortenaukreis (prevention network Ortenau, southwest Germany) and the project "Lenzgesund" (health promotion in the Lenz quarter of Hamburg, Germany) - empirical approaches and solutions are described. Across projects five central principles could be extracted: 1) a detailed description of the intervention and its objectives, 2) the connection of concept, structure, process, and outcome evaluation, 3) a multimodal and multimethodic approach, 4) participation, and 5) the analysis of summative evaluation data and implementation factors. These principles enable the description of effects beyond RCT designs.