The growing focus on learning and accountability in Canada and internationally has resulted in an increasing need for evaluation approaches to understand and assess if interventions/programs work, how they work, and what can be done in the planning and implementing phase to make them work. Given the complexity of some of the health interventions, the designs and approaches required to evaluate need to go beyond standard clinical trials and often will involve the evaluator working with the policymakers and program planners right at the formulation of the intervention/program. This class will focus on development, implementation and evaluation of a variety of complex policy and programmatic interventions, which aim to improve outcomes at the patient, provider, population and system level.

Topics to be covered in this class include: the role of program theory and why we need to think theoretically about complex interventions; the relationships between program theory, threats to validity and evaluation design; stakeholder engagement, needs and evaluability assessment, types of evaluation (process and outcome evaluation) with different approaches and how they respond to complexity (approaches will include realist evaluation and developmental evaluation); varieties of evaluation design including experimental and quasi-experimental designs, economic evaluation.

Objective: at the end of the course, for a given intervention, students will be able to design and execute an evaluation plan that includes consideration of key evaluation questions; is appropriate to the program theory of the intervention; addresses key threats to design validity; and addresses policymaker and practitioner perspectives.