Evaluating Public Health Interventions

An authoritative student guide for how to evaluate complex public health interventions.

Public health interventions include any effort or policy that attempts to improve the well-being of individuals or an entire population. They can be run by governmental health departments or non-governmental organizations and can include educational programs, screening programs, vaccination programs, environmental improvements, and health promotion campaigns. Interventions that include multiple independent or interacting components are referred to as complex. Evaluating and predicting the efficacy of any public health intervention, as well as calculating the cost effectiveness, is essential. Using examples from multiple published studies conducted around the world, this textbook shows readers how to evaluate public health interventions in real-world settings. It will enable readers to understand how to investigate whether a public health intervention works, for whom, when, where, how, and why. It provides a comprehensive introduction to key areas of evaluation, including understanding complex interventions, developing program theories, community engagement in evaluation, and the main methods used in process, impact, and economic evaluation. It explains how different methods can be used individually and in combination to answer different kinds of evaluation questions and at different phases in an evaluation cycle and considers how the results of evaluations can be brought together to inform action.