Evidence-Making Interventions in Health

The Evidence-Making Interventions in Health program of research investigates how to optimise the translation and implementation of complex health interventions by advancing more emergent and adaptive approaches to evidence-making. We do this by reflecting critically on practices of evidence-making in implementation science and public health.

Under the leadership of Associate Professor Kari Lancaster and Professor Tim Rhodes, this program of research brings ideas from science and technology studies (STS) into conversation with public health and implementation science to develop critical approaches to the study of evidence, including how evidence is made, used, and translated in the health and policy field. The program fosters collaborations across disciplines (social science, public health, epidemiology, modelling) and works in dialogue with community organisations, clinicians and policy makers. The program partners with institutes, centres and differently situated scholars engaged in interventions research across UNSW and internationally.

Our research aims to:

• Develop critical approaches to the study of evidence, policy, implementation science and intervention translations in health;
• Advance the theory and practice of implementation science by incorporating insights from science and technology studies to understand how interventions are made to work in practices;
• Incorporate critical social science into the methods and practices of implementation science;
• Move implementation science into innovative terrain, with potential to change how evidence-making and intervention implementation is done in health and beyond. 

Our research includes:

• Innovative studies of intervention translations in health, especially in relation to Covid-19, hepatitis C, HIV, drugs and addictions;
• Examining how evidence is made and put to use in global and public health policy;
• Qualitative social research inside implementation trials and longitudinal cohort studies, including examining effects of innovative preventative, diagnostic, and treatment technologies;
• Studying the science and intervention of disease elimination, viral infections, and outbreaks.

Initial work streams include:

• Social study of the science and intervention of disease elimination, including in relation to HIV and hepatitis C, with a focus on technologies of prevention, diagnosis and elimination;
• Rapid response social research in the context of Covid-19, including investigating embodied experiences of Long Covid adaptation and recovery, and practices of Covid-19 care;
• Studying how mathematical models produce evidence to inform public policies in relation to infection control;
• Social study of outbreak science, including wastewater analysis;
• Social study of evidence and intervention translation in relation to drug policy, harm reduction and treatment technologies;
• Studying social relations of access to care, critically voicing marginalised and stigmatised experiences and practices;
• Innovative qualitative methods for praxiographic social research.