IPH Seminar: Public Health Architecture and Realist Methodology

On May 15th, 2020, Dr. Justin Jagosh, Director, Centre for Advancement in Realist Evaluation and Synthesis (CARES), UK, will be presenting a webinar titled “Public Health Architecture and Realist Methodology.”

Realist Methodology, with its emphasis on uncovering explanatory mechanisms and context-mechanism interactions, can help in envisioning the ‘architectural diversity’ within classes of interventions. In the domain of public health for example, interventions can comprise educational, incentivizing or punitive efforts. Interventions can be highly scripted or, conversely, be designed for customization. Interventions can change contexts or can be changed by them. Nation-wide strategies may create new opportunities in some jurisdictions and new deficits in other areas, leading to the ad hoc formation of more interventions. Thus, understanding the architecture of interventions can serve as a pre-cursor to comprehensive assessments, to anticipate blind spots and provide new ideas for innovation and complex problem solving. This webinar will review these ideas in relation to public health planning in line with principles of realist inquiry. You are invited to join us using Google Meet, linked to the top of this page.