Evaluating Public Health Interventions: 1. Examples, Definitions, and a Personal Note

摘要

In the first contribution to a new section in AJPH that will address critical methodological issues in evaluations of public health interventions, I will discuss topics in study design and analysis, covering the most innovative emerging methodologies and providing an overview of best practices. The methods considered are motivated by public health evaluations, both domestic and global. In this first contribution, I also define implementation science, program evaluation, impact evaluation, and cost-effectiveness research, disciplines that have tremendous methodological and substantive overlap with evaluation of public health interventions—the focus of this section. At the invitation of Alfredo Morabia, editor-in-chief of AJPH , I am pleased to offer the first piece in a new Journal section, “Evaluating Public Health Interventions,” that will address critical methodological issues that arise in the course of evaluating public health interventions. In this new section, I will consider topics in study design and analysis, describe the latest and most innovative emerging methodologies, and provide an overview of best practices. Although in many cases these best practices may be “tried and true,” others are promising recent innovations. I also will consider estimation of effectiveness as well as cost-effectiveness. The methods discussed are motivated by public health evaluations of interest, both domestic and global.