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ABSTRACT
Population-level health interventions are policies or programs that shift the distribution of health risk by addressing the underlying social, economic and environmental conditions. These interventions might be programs or policies designed and developed in the health sector, but they are more likely to be in sectors elsewhere, such as education, housing or employment. Population health intervention research attempts to capture the value and differential effect of these interventions, the processes by which they bring about change and the contexts within which they work best. In health research, unhelpful distinctions maintained in the past between research and evaluation have retarded the development of knowledge and led to patchy evidence about policies and programs. Myths about what can and cannot be achieved within community-level intervention research have similarly held the field back. The pathway forward integrates systematic inquiry approaches from a variety of disciplines.
Key words: Evaluation; population health intervention research; evidence-based practice; intervention research; population health
La traduction du résumé se trouve à la fin de l'article. Can J Public Health 2009;100(1):I8-I14.
There is an increasing move worldwide to shift the emphasis of population health research away from purely descriptive and analytic studies and towards the study of interventions to reduce health problems and reduce health inequities.1 This requires an appreciation of the best that we have learned from the diverse settings in which both health and social scientists have been working. As far as possible we call for an integration of that learning to assist in the development of the relatively new overarching field of population health intervention research.
This paper outlines the practice of intervention research in population health. We draw attention to a number of features that mark problematic and unnecessary distinctions between intervention research and evaluation research, arguing that these fields comprise very similar research practice and orientation.We discuss the skill sets involved in this type of research and end by describing and debugging common myths with regard to intervention research.
Defining intervention research
The definition of intervention draws from its Latin roots, venire, meaning to come and inter, meaning between, drawing attention from the outset that to intervene literally means to come in between, to disturb the "natural" order of things or a foreseeable sequence of events. If we...