Distributed for UCL Press
Evaluating Public Health Interventions
An authoritative student guide for how to evaluate complex public health interventions.
Public health interventions include any effort or policy that attempts to improve the well-being of individuals or an entire population. They can be run by governmental health departments or non-governmental organizations and can include educational programs, screening programs, vaccination programs, environmental improvements, and health promotion campaigns. Interventions that include multiple independent or interacting components are referred to as complex. Evaluating and predicting the efficacy of any public health intervention, as well as calculating the cost effectiveness, is essential. Using examples from multiple published studies conducted around the world, this textbook shows readers how to evaluate public health interventions in real-world settings. It will enable readers to understand how to investigate whether a public health intervention works, for whom, when, where, how, and why. It provides a comprehensive introduction to key areas of evaluation, including understanding complex interventions, developing program theories, community engagement in evaluation, and the main methods used in process, impact, and economic evaluation. It explains how different methods can be used individually and in combination to answer different kinds of evaluation questions and at different phases in an evaluation cycle and considers how the results of evaluations can be brought together to inform action.
696 pages | 7.44 x 9.69 | © 2026
Table of Contents
List of tables
List of boxes
List of contributors
Preface
Part I: Fundamentals of evaluation
1 Welcome to Evaluating Public Health Interventions
Tim Colbourn and James Hargreaves
2 Evaluating public health interventions in real world conditions: ‘FURRIE’ challenges and questions across the evaluation cycle
James Hargreaves, Farhana Haque, Fiona Majorin, Ruth Ponsford, Merrick Zwarenstein, Chris Bonell, Aoife Doyle and Tim Colbourn
3 Community involvement in evaluation research: Towards transformation
Rochelle A. Burgess, Lucy Platt, Nehla Djellouli, Aoife Doyle, Jeremy Segrott, Musonda Simwinga, Audrey Prost
4 Theory-based evaluation
Aoife M. Doyle, Bejoy Nambiar, Joelle Mak, Linda Nyondo-Mipando and Seyi Soremekun
Part 2: Evaluating processes
5 Process evaluation
Jeremy Segrott, Nehla Djellouli, Bernadette Hensen, Bejoy Nambiar and Ruth Ponsford
6 Quantitative data in evaluations: Programme monitoring, routine data sources & primary data collection
Katie Greenland, Bernadette Hensen, Mwelwa Phiri, Om Prasad Gautam and Carina King
7 Qualitative and mixed methods research in evaluation: Theory and practice
Giulia Scarpa, Georgia Chisnall, Nehla Djellouli, Nambusi Kyegombe, Meghna Ranganathan, Miriam Abdulla, Chido Dziva Chikwari, Cecilia Vindrola, Loraine J Bacchus and Mitzy Gafos
8 Realist Evaluation: An Introduction to Key Principles and Approaches
Ligia Kiss, Bejoy Nambiar, Nehla Djellouli and Tim Colbourn
Part 3: Evaluating outcomes
9 Impact evaluation and causal inference
Calum Davey, Audrey Prost, Tim Colbourn and James Hargreaves
10 Cluster randomised controlled trials
Andrew Copas, Tim Colbourn and Merrick Zwarenstein
11 Difference in differences
Timothy Powell-Jackson, Stephen O’Neill and Noemi Kreif
12 Interrupted time series
Ben Armstrong and Antonio Gasparrini
13 Regression discontinuity designs
Aidan G. O’Keeffe, Mariam O. Adeleke, Gianluca Baio, Sia Kromann Nicolaisen and Irene Petersen
14 Propensity score matching
Aurélia Lépine and Carole Treibich
15 Synthetic control
Aurélia Lépine
Part 4: Economic evaluation
16 Principles of economic evaluation of public health interventions
Catherine Pitt, Iris Mosweu, Hassan Haghparast-Bidgoli and Neha Batura
17 Economic evaluation of public health interventions: Costs, outcomes, cost-effectiveness, and other considerations
Catherine Pitt, Iris Mosweu, Hassan Haghparast-Bidgoli and Neha Batura
Part 5: Evaluation integration, synthesis and transferability
18 Realist trials
Chris Bonell, Emily Warren and GJ Melendez-Torres
19 Evidence Synthesis
Mukdarut Bangpan, Sajesh K Veettil, Preethy D’Souza, Kelly Dickson and Nathorn Chaiyakunapruk
20 Using evaluation to inform decisions on public health interventions in new settings
Tim Colbourn, Catherine Pitt, Elvin Geng, Lu Gram, Calum Davey, Chris Bonell and James Hargreaves
Glossary
Index