Applied Research and Evaluation

Overall objective: Identify research priorities and conduct research that will inform and underpin better decision-making for public health nutrition policy and practice.

Many of the ‘best buys’, that is, the most innovative and up-to-date nutrition programs and policies, have not been evaluated sufficiently in Australia and overseas. This is particularly true for nutrition programs which are integrated into multifaceted health promotion programs. Such programs are large, diffuse, and have lofty and varied objectives, e.g. forming a successful coalition, improving the capacity of local groups to tackle health problems, improving community environments to be more health supporting, AND improving individual dietary behaviour, and so on. As well, many effective or promising interventions to improve some nutrition outcomes have not been evaluated with respect to their influence on the prevention of weight gain and overweight and obesity.

Even for programs where evidence of success is available, little or nothing may be known about the conditions required to make such a program work in a particular situation. Many of the nutrition programs being implemented in NSW and elsewhere are modelled on aspects of effective programs in the published and unpublished literature. Yet, very few of these programs conduct regular process evaluations to demonstrate that they are being implemented as planned.

As part of the ongoing reviews on effective nutrition programs, the Cluster aims to identify some of the important unanswered questions that may be worthwhile investigating, and to undertake research, usually on a collaborative basis, to answer questions of relevance to policy and practice.

The Cluster works with key networks, such as the Health Promotion Research and Evaluation Coordinators, to encourage those conducting nutrition programs to apply and use appropriate process and impact evaluations to manage and refine their programs.

Most of the work in this stream flows from the reviews of published evidence of program effectiveness (link to evidence-based planning). The Cluster assists the NSW Nutrition Network and others working in NSW Area Health Services to sharpen their grant applications for implementation and evaluation of nutrition programs.