The five health promotion and education committees (CODES) from the Pays de la Loire region are carrying out health promotion projects involving socially disadvantaged people. These projects are referred to as ateliers santé (literally meaning "health workshops"). These interventions are conducted over a series of participatory sessions, which creates a more supportive structure to guide people with difficulties assisting them to better recognise and formulate their health needs, as they are normally part of a population group which is neither accustomed to expressing their health needs nor to being heard on this subject. At present little is known about these projects; therefore the Inter-regional and departmental health education committee from Nantes chose to carry out an evaluation of 7 of the 47 existing "workshops". Each one of the seven interventions required an average of 31 hours of preparation. Overall, there were 9 sessions organised with 8 to 9 participants, each lasting for the duration of 2.5 hours, held over a period of 32 weeks. At the end of each session, 85% of the participants claimed that there were satisfied. When questioned six months after the end of their "workshop", half of the 37 participants reported that their perceived health status was a little or much better after having taken part in the process. The evaluation demonstrates that a more clear definition of the operational objectives is necessary in order to promote increased input from the participants and to clarify the intentions of the project team towards a population group which needs a means by which it can enter into this critical debate. The process appears to be in accordance with the criteria and goals of health promotion: negotiation of the content, participation of members of the target audience throughout various stages of the project, and adjustment of the size and scale of the project being to involve a small total number of participants in order to favour effective follow up. Although evaluating the effectiveness and impact of such interventions is difficult and complicated by complex methodological questions, these "workshops" seem to have been greatly appreciated both by those who requested them and those who participated in them, with encouraging results having been witnessed in the lives of certain participants, which all serves as an incentive to pursue this kind of project.