Implementation evaluation; how, what and why?
Implementation evaluation; how, what and why?
In an ideal world, one combats public health problems with theory- and evidence-based programmes. In the real world, evidence-based programmes are often lacking and programmes that are developed and implemented are mainly practice-based. In the last few decades, governmental and other funding agencies have prioritized the development and evaluation of evidence-based obesity prevention programmes to combat the major public health problem of childhood obesity. Consequently, a large variety of healthy nutrition and physical activity promotion programmes targeting youth have been developed and evaluated in more or less controlled and real-world settings. Unfortunately, the real-world effectiveness of many programmes is disappointing, especially in the long term.
This lack of effectiveness could be caused by the fact that the programme was not effective in itself, or because it was not implemented as intended. It is therefore of obvious importance to evaluate if and to what extent a programme was implemented as intended. Implementation evaluation research can provide insight into the dynamic nature of implementation processes and key factors that are expected to be critical for achieving effectiveness of overweight and obesity prevention programmes during implementation.
Three important generic implementation research questions in the context of programme evaluation are: 1) how to promote implementation as intended?; 2) what happens during implementation?; and 3) why did my programme (not) work? In this commentary, we discuss these three questions that can lead to better understanding of how to implement overweight and obesity prevention programmes effectively.
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About The Author
Femke van Nassau is a senior researcher at the Amsterdam UMC, VUmc, specializing in human movement science. Her work at the Department of Public and Occupational Health and the Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute focuses on developing, implementing, and scaling up lifestyle interventions to promote physical activity and reduce sedentary behavior. With a PhD in scaling up school-based obesity prevention programs, she continues to lead innovative health promotion projects across various settings.
