Knowing What Works - Evaluation for Public Health

In the era of evidence-based practice and policy in healthcare, everyone needs evidence on how well an intervention works and whether it provides value for money to inform funding decisions. Evaluation is a tool to provide such information: measuring the success of the intervention in achieving its intended outcomes, determining its value, and providing information on how to improve the intervention to attain even greater success. This course is designed to help students to answer questions such as "Should a new vaccine to protect against invasive meningococcal disease be recommended in publicly funded immunization programs? Did the new parent education program actually result in more children being vaccinated? If not, how can we improve the program?" The course aims to extend students understanding of the evaluation process and the quantitative, qualitative and economic evaluation approaches which are used to evaluate a wide range of public health interventions. Using real world examples, emphasis is placed on the value of integrated/mixed evaluation approaches. The course equips students with the practical knowledge and skills to design and apply an integrated framework to evaluate a public health intervention.