Evaluating the health impacts of policies and interventions

The short course “Evaluating the health impacts of policies and interventions” will address quantitative empirical methods for policy evaluation, targeting Latin Americans who act as political analysts, researchers and students in public health. It’s a free course, promoted by the Center for Data Integration and Knowledge for Health (Cidacs / Fiocruz) in partnership with the Medical Research Council and the Chief Scientists Office (MRC / CSO) of the Social and Public Health Sciences Unit of the University of Glasgow.

To introduce the concepts and methods underpinning evaluation of public health (and non-health sector) policies and other widespread interventions. The course aims to build technical capacity to understand, interpret and identify the strengths and weaknesses of different natural experiment designs and the evaluation of complex interventions.

The course is designed for researchers or policy analysts based in government policy agencies, academic staff and postgraduate students, and public health practitioners. The course is also intended to build a community of professionals equipped with skills, knowledge, and tools to address the design, implementation and quantitative evaluation of natural experiments.

• Importance of evaluation and evaluability assessment
• Guidance on the development, evaluation, and implementation of complex interventions
• Essential concepts for causal inference in randomized experiments and observational studies
• Approaches to focus on observed and unobserved confounding: regression discontinuity, difference in difference, propensity score methods.

• Gain a clear understanding of complex interventions as well as the underlying programme theory;
• Design an impact evaluation and determine which methods can be used in the evaluation; and
• Identify causal effects using the potential outcomes framework.

This is an intermediate-level course on quantitative empirical methods for policy evaluation. As such, the following knowledge is required: familiarity with basic statistical concepts and basic tools – for instance, linear and logistic regression – and also with data processing using Stata and R.

• Duration: 4 weeks (~3 hours per week plus learning time)
• Applicants are required to fill in this application form which will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Applications will take one to two weeks to be processed. The deadline for submissions is xx
• Course participants should ensure that they are able to commit to attending all four week-long sessions so that they can gain a comprehensive overview of evaluation of public health policies and programmes
• Resources: articles and books will be suggested for preparatory reading
• Practical: examples illustrating impact evaluation using R and Stata

Date: from July 15th to July 28th, 2021
Application form: click here
Consultations: ehipi.course@gmail.com
Results: by 08/08

The course will feature lectures by the following researchers: Alastair Leyland, Peter Craig, Laurence Moore, Maria Yury Ichihara, Nai Rui Chng, Vittal Katikireddi, Mauro Sanchez, Kathryn Skivington, Michelle Hilton-Boon, Andy Baxter, Julia Pescarini, Vinicius de Araújo Oliveira and Renzo Flores Ortiz. The classes will take place from August 16th to August 20th (Week 1), August 30th to September 3rd (Week 2), September 13th to September 17th (Week 3) and September 27th to October 1st (Week 4). See the course outline here.