Article Text
Abstract
In global health, researchers and decision makers, many of whom have medical, epidemiology or biostatistics background, are increasingly interested in evaluating the implementation of health interventions. Implementation science, particularly for the study of public policies, has existed since at least the 1930s. This science makes compelling use of explicit theories and analytic frameworks that ensure research quality and rigour. Our objective is to inform researchers and decision makers who are not familiar with this research branch about these theories and analytic frameworks. We define four models of causation used in implementation science: intervention theory, frameworks, middle-range theory and grand theory. We then explain how scientists apply these models for three main implementation studies: fidelity assessment, process evaluation and complex evaluation. For each study, we provide concrete examples from research in Cuba and Africa to better understand the implementation of health interventions in global health context. Global health researchers and decision makers with a quantitative background will not become implementation scientists after reading this article. However, we believe they will be more aware of the need for rigorous implementation evaluations of global health interventions, alongside impact evaluations, and in collaboration with social scientists.
- health systems evaluation
- public health
- intervention study
- qualitative study
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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Footnotes
Handling editor Seye Abimbola
Twitter @ValeryRidde, @emilie_robert_
Contributors VR came up with the idea for the article, and then the three authors developed the content together on the basis of their collective and respective experiences.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests VR and ER have been funded as research consultants by the Department of Health Systems Governance and Financing of WHO.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement No data for this article.