Prevention research resources for health professionals

This section provides an overview of prevention and health promotion that will be useful in determining the need, scope and focus of research and how the results can be used.  

• The World Health Organization webpage for health promotion includes information, guidance and news on global health promotion.
• Theory at a Glance: describes influential theories of health-related behaviors, processes of shaping behavior, and the effects of community and environmental factors on behavior.

• A description of the Primary Health Care system in Australia by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
• WHO webpage on primary health care includes information and toolkits for the global action. 
• The drive towards universal health cover (UHC) 
• The 10 building blocks of primary care identifies and describes the essential elements of primary care to facilitate high performance 

PHC provides opportunities for prevention and health promotion 

• A paper by Prof Mark Harris on Opportunities for prevention and health promotion in primary health care
• The RACGP Preventive Health Guildline; for GPs includes the Guidelines for preventive activities in general practice (the Red Book) and Putting prevention into practice (the Green Book)
• National strategic framework for chronic conditions (Australia). A greater emphasis on preventative measures is outlined to reduce the chronic disease burden

CPHCE and the School of Population Health developed an online course for GP registrars to provide an introduction to research in PHC. This course is freely accessible to anyone wanting to learn about doing research in PHC. To access the course, click here. There are many online manuals, training programs and guides for research and evaluation. It’s worth looking at a few different ones to see what might suit your needs at this time. Here are a few:

• Practical Research and Evaluation : A Start-to-Finish Guide for Practitioners This book is a starter ‘DIY’ text for practitioners who are looking to conduct evaluation studies and research as part of their own professional practice.
• Doing Practitioner Research focuses on helping practitioners conduct research in their own organisations, and attention is given to the best methods for doing this effectively and sensitively. 
• Managers guide to evaluation This is an interactive guide for people who are managing an evaluation. The guide can be used for managing an evaluation that is conducted by an external evaluator or evaluation team, an internal team, or by a combination of these.
• NSW Government guide to commissioning research This guide to commissioning evaluation services complements the NSW Government Program Evaluation Guidelines and Toolkit. It promotes a proactive, planned and structured approach to commissioning evaluations, including information on when and how to commission an evaluation and how to make the most of the results
• NSW Government Evaluation Toolkit takes you through seven steps for planning and implementing a program evaluation project.
• Better Evaluation Developing Monitoring and Evaluation Frameworks + FRAMEWORK TEMPLATE
• Vic Health Evaluation framework for health promotion and disease prevention programs

Frameworks for evaluation help to plan the evaluation:

• The RE-AIM framework to guide the planning and evaluation of programs according to 5 key outcomes: Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance website & seminal paper
• Developmental evaluation for working in the early stage of an innovation in situations that are highly complex: A Primer and A Practitioner’s Guide to Developmental Evaluation
• Realist evaluation, Realist evaluation, which asks “what works, for whom, under what circumstances and how”: An introduction
• Logic models for planning and evaluation: UWEx website; NSW Health Guide; Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Development Guide 
• A short overview of Qualitative Methods in Health Care Research

Working collaboratively with consumers and across institutions can help with the appropriateness of methods and uptake of results.

• ACI  Guide to Build Co‑design Capability
• VicHealth The partnerships analysis tool This resource is for organisations entering into or working in a partnership to assess, monitor and maximise its ongoing effectiveness. 
•  Co-Design Kickstarter. A short guide to get started, and become more familiar with co-design research

Policy research and development:

• WHO Health in all policies training manual 
• Nine questions to guide development and implementation of Health in All Policies 
• Health policy – why research it and how: health political science

Systematic reviews: 

• Description of different types of systematic review and step-by-step guide to conducting and writing a systematic review
• Rapid Review Guidebook The National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools provides guidance on the process of conducting rapid reviews to use evidence to inform policy and program decision making.

Health Impact Assessment (HIA):

• What are health impact assessments?
• Why and when to conduct a HIA
• Conducting a health impact assessment
• Equity-focussed HIA
• Examples of HIA: HIA connect (Aus), HIA gateway (UK), Health Impact Project (USA)

Statistics: 

• Online Statistics Education: A Multimedia Course of Study

Ethics:

• NHMRC guidelines 
• The AH&MRC Ethics Committee for research proposals affecting the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people and communities in NSW
• Ethical approval for research in the NSW health system - the REGIS system

Data:

• Organising data storage and sharing: Australian National Data Service (ANDS) guides

Social determinants of health (SDOH)

• What are the SDOH and what does it mean for clinicians?
• Guidance on measurement of the social determinants of health by NACCHO
  
  

Sustainable development goals (SDGs):

• WHO comprehensive perspective on SDGs
• Measurement of SDGs

Health literacy:

• Health literacy: The Solid Facts (WHO)
• How do you measure it? The Health Literacy Tool Shed
• Health literacy - a guide from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care

Patient activation:

• Patient activation (PA) describes the knowledge, skills and confidence a person has in managing their own health and care
• The Patient Activation Measure (PAM) is a validated licenced tool to measure patients’ skills, knowledge and confidence to manage their long-term conditions.
• An implementation guide from the NHS about PA and the PAM is here. 

Urban Health:

• About healthy cities
• Evaluation of urban health

• A template for planning knowledge translation
• Guidance on writing up research for publication
• Key concepts in research translation (Rychetnik et al, 2012)
• Report Writing