Evaluation of Public Health Interventions

This course is part of the MSc program ‘Nutritional Epidemiology and Public Health’, and particularly relevant for students aiming at a career in the public and private sector. In this course students learn how to evaluate public health interventions (policies and/or intervention programmes), consisting of three elements: a process evaluation (measuring the quality of the intervention and its implementation), an effect evaluation (measuring the effects of the intervention on health and health related behaviours), and an economic evaluation (measuring the costs of the intervention and its implementation, and how this relates to the measured effects).
The last three steps of the Public Health Cycle are used as a framework for developing an evaluation plan:

• Step 5. Develop an evaluation plan; this step concerns the development of a plan for an evaluation of the processes and outcomes of the intervention based on the products from the previous steps (logic model);
• Step 6. Perform quality control; during the implementation stage, the intervention has been conducted and data have been collected. Quality of interventions can be enhanced by giving feedback based on intermediate evaluation results. Sometimes (components of) the intervention need revision in order to reach the objectives;
• Step 7. Analyse processes and outcomes; to close the cycle, in this step the data are analysed in order to make valid conclusions about whether the intervention has achieved its aims and objectives and whether and how the processes can be improved.

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Explain the need for a coherent evaluation plan to evaluate policies and programmes conducted in a real-life setting
• Explain the process evaluation, including indicators, research questions, and data collection methods
• Explain the effect evaluation, including indicators and study design
• Explain the economic evaluation, including indicators for costs and effects
• Integrate the three types of evaluation, i.e., process, effect and economic evaluation
• Apply step 5-7 in the public health cycle to a health interventions in a group assignment

Assumed Knowledge:

Distance learning courses CHL33303 Epidemiology and Public Health Policies;
CHL33303 Epidemiology and Public Health Policies;
HNH31903 Randomised Controlled Trials: Design and Analysis;
HNH48303 Observational Designs & Validity or the on-campus equivalents.