Best practice portals in health promotion and disease prevention: approaches, definitions, and intervention evaluation criteria.

Abstract

Introduction: The evaluation of practices is a valuable source of evidence in the context of an evidence-based approach to public health. Best practice portals (BPPs) are promising tools for facilitating access to recommended programmes, monitoring and improving the quality of interventions. There are several such portals in Europe, but there is little work in the scientific literature on the subject. The study aimed to identify and characterise BPPs in health promotion and disease prevention and analyse the approaches, definitions, and criteria for evaluating interventions.

Methods: To identify portals, websites of public health institutions and organisations, the PubMed database and grey literature were searched. The material consisted of elements of each portal's design, information available on their websites, and collected publications. The study applied a qualitative analysis with a descriptive approach and covered a detailed description of the four selected portals.

Results: Among the analysed BPPs, three were from the European region, and one was from Canada (pioneer in developing best practice tools). The dates of launching the portals ranged from the year 2003 to 2016. The number of interventions collected in the databases ranged from 120 to 337. Portals were useful, well-designed, and developed tools. BPPs differed in terms of their objectives and roles, adopted standards and criteria for assessing practices, and other operational factors. In each portal, interventions underwent a rigorous and multilevel assessment process conducted by independent experts in the field and based on intervention evaluation criteria. Generally, the analysed catalogues described similar issues, e.g., Selection of the issue addressed by the practice, Description of a particular element of the practice, Theoretical foundation, or Evaluation/Effectiveness. However, we identified both similarities and differences in the adopted terms (names of criteria) and their definitions. It was shown that sometimes the same criterion had different names depending on the catalogue. On the other hand, criteria with identical or similar names could be defined differently within the detailed thematic scope.

Conclusion: The similarities and differences presented in this work can serve as a valuable starting point for designing such tools to support practice-based and evidence-based decision-making in health promotion and disease prevention.