Criteria for the systematic review of health promotion and public health interventions

Abstract

Systematic reviews of public health interventions are fraught with challenges. Complexity is inherent; this may be due to multi-component interventions, diverse study populations, multiple outcomes measured, mixed study designs utilized and the effect of context on intervention design, implementation and effectiveness. For policy makers and practitioners to use systematic reviews to implement effective public health programmes, systematic reviews must include this information, which seeks to answer the questions posed by decision makers, including recipients of programmes. This necessitates expanding the traditional evaluation of evidence to incorporate the assessment of theory, integrity of interventions, context and sustainability of the interventions and outcomes. Unfortunately however, the critical information required for judging both the quality of a public health intervention and whether or not an intervention is worthwhile or replicable is missing from most public health intervention studies. When the raw material is not available in primary studies the systematic review process becomes even more challenging. Systematic reviews, which highlight these critical gaps, may act to encourage better reporting in primary studies. This paper provides recommendations to reviewers on the issues to address within a public health systematic review and, indirectly, provides advice to researchers on the reporting requirements of primary studies for the production of high quality systematic reviews.

Associação entre atividade física e qualidade de vida em adultos

“…23 There were selected studies that met the following inclusion criteria: report of the association or effect of PA on QoL; use of an instrument for measuring PA; use of any version of the SF or WHOQOL for assessing QoL; year of publication from 1980; adults (≥18 years); empirical cross-sectional or longitudinal, randomized controlled, cohort or case-control studies; and studies published in English or Portuguese. Studies that did not report any instrument for the measurement of PA and/ or failed to assess QoL using either SF or WHOQOL, review studies, opinion articles, letters to the editor, books or book chapters, and dissertations and theses were excluded.…”

Kost i skole og barnehage og betydningen for helse og læring

“…2003) (Jackson og Waters 2005). Dette innebaerer en vurdering av forskningslitteraturen ut i fra følgende kriterier:…”

Critique of the review of 'Water fluoridation for the prevention of dental caries' published by the Cochrane Collaboration in 2015

“…It is a population level intervention and should be judged as such. [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Therefore, measurement of the impact of water fluoridation is not like a clinical intervention for the following reasons. First, the context in which water is fluoridated is complex: 16,17 its introduction and maintenance requires legislation, installation and maintenance of equipment, technical training of water treatment plant operators, development and adherence to procedures and processes, and continuity of supply and regular monitoring.…”

“…Although RCTs are the method of choice for evaluating the effectiveness of medicines and some clinical interventions, literature published during the past 20 years has indicated that they are inappropriate for evaluating public health preventive programmes and other complex interventions. [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Using water fluoridation as an example, it is not possible to randomly assign individuals to fluoridated and non-fluoridated water supplies. RCTs may have high internal validity, but they also may have poor external validity.…”