Research & Evaluation

Our multidisciplinary teams use research designs that are feasible, relevant, and timely to understand how individual behavior, organizational factors, market context, information technology, and financing systems affect access, quality, cost, and health outcomes.

The knowledge and findings from this work result in practical recommendations to policymakers, public health, and health care practitioners for transforming health.

Our surveys generate exceptional response rates because of how we tailor survey instruments, sampling designs, and data collection modalities to best reach target audiences. These audiences include youth, disenfranchised populations, elderly, health care providers, and policymakers.

We employ new media platforms, such as social media, along with traditional forms of survey research, including mail and email surveys, telephone, and in-person interviews.

Our implementation research focuses on understanding and working within real-world conditions. We look at the factors affecting implementation, the process of implementation, and their results. This includes how to introduce potential solutions into a health system or community, as well as how to promote successful programs, scale up their application, and identify ways to achieve long term sustainability.

Our research takes into account those who will be using the information, including providers, policymakers, and program beneficiaries. We consider many aspects of implementation, such as the adoption of initiatives, their feasibility, cost, and sustainability. This research helps to identify best practices and enables health care systems to be more evidence-based.

We work with implementing agencies and funders to better understand whether particular initiatives or approaches are effective in order to ensure that resources are being used appropriately and efficiently.

We have the skills to evaluate programs across multiple sites using mixed-method approaches. We look at the impact of programs over the short and long term along with how well they can be generalized to other settings.

We have focused attention on evaluating the effectiveness of health care reform efforts and multicomponent initiatives. It is important to use quality research methods to identify the mechanisms that produce results and to clearly communicate those results to stakeholders.

We carefully choose our analytic methods to ensure that they match the available primary and secondary data, are understandable, and action-oriented. Our quantitative approaches include mapping, focus groups, intensity scoring, survey weighting, and claims analysis. To further enhance the story, we often supplement our work with qualitative methods.