Evaluation of Health Programmes

COURSES AND PROGRAMMES CAN BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Evaluation of health programmes and interventions (hereafter called programmes) is important to determine what works, for whom, why and under which circumstances—by taking into account programme complexity, context, and the perspectives of stakeholders. In this course, we focus on constructing and applying change pathways to guide comprehensive evaluations of public health programmes and on the design of process and impact evaluations.

Tools such as change pathways support the development of robust evaluation frameworks. The first theme of this course focuses on developing change pathways and provides an introduction to implementation theories, models and frameworks to inform evaluation. In the second theme, the course introduces Process Evaluations, used to understand why a programme worked (or didn’t), for whom and how, and how to adapt a programme accordingly. We will use change pathways to develop mixed methods process evaluations to address appropriate process evaluation questions, including “has the programme been implemented as intended? What was the quality of implementation? Who was (not) reached by the programme?”

Understanding “whether a programme works” is a pillar of evidence-based public health. Evaluation results allow public health managers and programmers to adapt and/or modify their programmes, determine which programme to implement, and contributes to the “evidence base” for decision makers. The third theme of the course focuses on approaches and methods to estimate the impact of health programmes. We will introduce the cluster randomized trial alongside other, non-randomised, evaluation designs and will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these designs using real life examples. You will acquire an understanding of how to choose the “best” impact evaluation design based on the programme, its context, data availability, and other factors.

This short course targets health professionals, health system and programme managers, decision makers and researchers involved in and/or interested in health programme and intervention evaluation.

The course draws on ITM’s expertise in specific health domains (including HIV and, reproductive health) and quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods, with input from collaborating organisations/institutions, including the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in the UK, and the University of Zambia and Zambart, in Zambia, and builds on the rich exchange of experience between students from different countries.