Running head: PLANNING FOR EVALUATION 1
Week 9 Assignment 4: Planning for evaluation
University Affiliation
Student’s Name
PLANNING FOR EVALUATION 2
Section 5: Evaluation
The evaluations of both simple and complex public health interventions always focuses
on measuring the impacts public health interventions on a single or rather a small number of a
specified health and health-related outcomes, in this case, gastric cancer (Friis & Sellers,
2014). However, looking at the impact evaluations alone, one is subjected to a small chance
of exploring the mechanisms behind an intervention’s success or failure, especially when the
impacts are unevenly distributed among different population groups (Healthy People 2020,
2011).
For the purposes of this research, I chose to deploy other forms of evaluation in trying to
tackle and look for valid ways to counter the health problem. I settled on process evaluation
technique (Excite, 2004). Process evaluation is a kind of evaluation plan that has been
developed and utilized in order to understand the intervention, implementation and the
mechanisms by which the mentioned interventions can be utilized in order to yield viable and
captivating impacts across a population, while at the same time cutting short alcohol
consumption and minimizing incidences of gastric cancer (Center for Global Development,
n.d.). However, there is no known sole and sure definition of a process evaluation, but
according to the Medical Research Council’s, the term can be used to imply to the act of
assessing and examining the fidelity and the quality of the implementation process, clarifying
the causal mechanisms of gastric cancer, as well as identifying and unraveling the contextual
factors associated with the variation in outcomes across various patients within the facility
(Healthy People 2020, 2011).
A process evaluation should be carried out alongside the outcome or impact evaluation,
this will ensure that it quantify the impact of an intervention on varied outcomes, as well as
the known and anticipated outcome of gastric cancer associated to alcohol intake (Excite,
2004). Moreover, the act of evaluating public health interventions deployed in countering
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health issues, can be of great significance. Health care sectors should adopt the approach and
the use of robust and complex systems in their day to day activities, for a healthy nation to be
realized (Friis & Sellers, 2014).
Indeed, the application of systems thinking and insights from the complexity
epidemiology sciences can provide a channel in which alcohol consumption can be evaluated
against it’s associated risk (Excite, 2004). Thinking systemically also means making sense of
the boundaries of a system and making decisions about what constitutes the system, and what
might be considered within or outside of the system (Framingham Heart Study, 2018).
Although system maps are not a necessary element of systems thinking, they can be helpful
for making sense of and depicting system boundaries, as articulated by both those acting
within the system (Healthy People 2020. (2011). It can also assist in unraveling the
uniqueness upon which the interventions may bring varied impacts within a system (Friis &
Sellers, 2014). This may include impacts termed to be of value during evaluation, as
intended as well as emerging impacts during evaluation process.
Notably, by incorporating epidemiological and an explicitly relational focus to the
evaluation design and placing the wider context in the foreground of the analysis, coaxed
with a a complex system approach to evaluation may assist in making sensible intervention
strategies that are viable and applicable in curbing the issue of gastric cancer globally (Excite,
2004). In addition, an explicit epidemiological complex systems approach can assist public
health evaluators in coming up with a scheme, that will oversee the success of a set system
(Healthy People 2020, 2011). This could include considering how the intervention acts as an
event that prompts a series of changes in the way a complex system behaves (Excite, 2004).
Furthermore, it could include consideration of how the intervention itself changes, as
system elements and the system as a whole adapt and respond to it (Healthy People 2020.
(2011). Additionally, complexity science enabled me in my study to inculcate varied extra
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aspects that were valuable in my study (Center for Global Development, n.d.). Especially in
my quest to unravel and gain insights worthy of curbing the health issue, as well as seek to
evaluate the mechanisms by which public health interventions have impacted in the real-
world environments (Excite, 2004).
Concurrently, these concepts can as well be applied in describing, analyzing, measuring
and estimating the essential attributes needed for change (Healthy People 2020, 2011). In
fact, the change will have to happen first within and across the elements incorporated in the
system, indeed, these collective changes will eventually yield or result in the emergent
system change (Framingham Heart Study, 2018). I therefore, suggest that to ascertain this,
evaluations should be designed with a complex systems perspective, which requires being
agile and adaptable in order to capture the system change the evaluators intend to assess
(Friis & Sellers, 2014).
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References
Center for Global Development. (n.d.). Case 1: Eradicating smallpox. Retrieved March 5,
2012, from [Link]
Excite. (2004). An introduction to epidemiology. Retrieved from
[Link]
Friis, R. H., & Sellers, T. A. (2021). Epidemiology for public health practice (6th ed.). Jones
& Bartlett.
Framingham Heart Study. (2018). Epidemiological background and design: The Framingham
study. Retrieved from
[Link]
Healthy People 2020. (2011). Topics & objectives index. Retrieved from
[Link]
Laureate Education (Producer). (2012). Epidemiology and population health [Interactive
media]. Baltimore, MD: Author.