Department of Health

Evidence and evaluation

Two basic principles guide a contemporary approach to health promotion and disease prevention programs, policy and practice:

  • using evidence to guide our decisions about interventions
  • consistently evaluating the effectiveness of interventions in terms of their impact.

We refer to evidence primarily as evaluation and research evidence for intervention effectiveness or cost effectiveness to help us answer the questions ‘What interventions work?’ and ‘Is the intervention cost effective?’

Evidence-based decision making is a key principle of the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008.

External sources of evidence

External sources of evidence provide invaluable resources to develop policy and evaluate projects.

Guidelines on research evidence and evaluation

Tools and guidelines on how to use research evidence, to conduct or commission good quality evaluations and encourage consistent and effective reporting of research evidence.

Rapid reviews of evidence

Rapid reviews are prepared to answer specific questions raised by policy officers.

Summaries of evidence

Relevant research has been summarised to make it more accessible to decision-makers.

Reviewed 07 October 2015

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