The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Disease Prevention sponsored a new open-access supplemental journal issue, “Design and Analytic Methods to Evaluate Multilevel Interventions to Reduce Health Disparities,” published by Prevention Science this month. The issue—edited by GPH Interim Dean Melody Goodman and NIH Office of Disease Prevention Director David Murray—provides a peer-reviewed collection of papers on rigorous clinical trial methods that can be used to evaluate community-based interventions in populations that experience health disparities.
There is a growing recognition that successful preventive interventions need to address social determinants of health. Effectively reducing health disparities often requires the use of study designs that go beyond the individual-level randomized controlled trial; however, studies that evaluate multilevel interventions face unique challenges and require specialized design and analytical approaches.
To address this research need, the NIH Office of Disease Prevention sponsored the supplemental issue featuring 12 papers that highlight new approaches to the design and analysis of multilevel interventions and examples of strong applications of existing design and analytic methods with a focus on health equity. The issue also includes strategies for developing multilevel interventions that balance methodological rigor with design feasibility, acceptability, and ethical considerations.
Notably, GPH researchers contributed to four of the 12 articles that appear in the supplemental issue:
- Design and Analytic Methods to Evaluate Multilevel Interventions to Reduce Health Disparities: Rigorous Methods Are Available (editorial co-authored by Melody Goodman)
- Optimizing Interventions for Equitability: Some Initial Ideas (Jillian Strayhorn and Linda Collins)
- Operationalizing Primary Outcomes to Achieve Reach, Effectiveness, and Equity in Multilevel Interventions (Kate Guastaferro and Jillian Strayhorn)
- Application of a Heuristic Framework for Multilevel Interventions to Eliminate the Impact of Unjust Social Processes and Other Harmful Social Determinants of Health (Desiree Williams, Melody Goodman, and Holly Hagan)
“It is exciting to see the depth of expertise our GPH faculty bring to this special issue,” said Goodman. “Their contributions to advancing health equity research methods for multilevel interventions will undoubtedly have a significant impact on the field.”
Investigators can use the Office of Disease Prevention’s quick guide to navigate the issue and identify which articles address the research methods relevant to their work, such as power calculations and sample size, the use of simulations to inform study design, mixed methods approaches, health equity metrics or outcomes, and intervention development.