ArticleBMJ global health2020
Making sense of the evidence in population health intervention research: building a dry stone wall.
Article in BMJ global health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of economic sanctions on health and health systems in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review and narrative synthesis.BMJ global health · 2023Pooled it
- Features of effective staff training programmes within school-based interventions targeting student activity behaviour: a systematic review and meta-analysis.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2022Pooled it
- Socioeconomic and gendered inequities in travel behaviour in Africa: Mixed-method systematic review and meta-ethnography.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Pooled it
- The bio-psycho-social determinants of health: Reflections on the CIAR Population Health Program (1987-2003).Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique · 2026Article
- Natural experiments in the built environment: evaluating impacts on health.Health promotion and chronic disease prevention in Canada : research, policy and practice · 2026Article
- Article
- Protocol: a systematic review+ (SR+) to combine associative and mechanistic evidence on the efficacy of face masks in reducing transmission of respiratory diseases.Systematic reviews · 2025Article
- Towards a complex systems model of evidence for public health.BMJ global health · 2025Review
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- Could Better-Quality Employment Improve Population Health? Findings From a Scoping Review of Multi-Dimensional Employment Quality Research and a Proposed Research Direction.American journal of industrial medicine · 2025Article
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- The association between precarious employment and stress among working aged individuals in the United States.Preventive medicine · 2024Article
- Uncovering the key working mechanisms of a complex community-based obesity prevention programme in the Netherlands using ripple effects mapping.Health research policy and systems · 2024Article
- Understanding how and why travel mode changes: analysis of longitudinal qualitative interviews.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2024Article
- The tales of two cities: use of evidence for introducing 20 miles per hour speed limits in Edinburgh and Belfast (United Kingdom).Health research policy and systems · 2024Article
- A complex systems lens can help us understand drivers of emerging challenges in work and health.Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health · 2024Article
- Hypothetical mechanisms driving physical activity levels in ethnic minority groups living in Europe: a systematically identified evidence-based conceptual systems model.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2024Article
- Population-level interventions for the primary prevention of dementia: a complex evidence review.EClinicalMedicine · 2024Review
- The ten steps for acting on health inequalities.Public health in practice (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
- Understanding how to create healthier places: A qualitative study exploring the complex system of urban development decision-making.Health & place · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
To effectively tackle population health challenges, we must address the fundamental determinants of behaviour and health. Among other things, this will entail devoting more attention to the evaluation of upstream intervention strategies. However, merely increasing the supply of such studies is not enough. The pivotal link between research and policy or practice should be the cumulation of insight from multiple studies. If conventional evidence synthesis can be thought of as analogous to building a wall, then we can increase the supply of bricks (the number of studies), their similarity (statistical commensurability) or the strength of the mortar (the statistical methods for holding them together). However, many contemporary public health challenges seem akin to herding sheep in mountainous terrain, where ordinary walls are of limited use and a more flexible way of combining dissimilar stones (pieces of evidence) may be required. This would entail shifting towards generalising the functions of interventions, rather than their effects; towards inference to the best explanation, rather than relying on binary hypothesis-testing; and towards embracing divergent findings, to be resolved by testing theories across a cumulated body of work. In this way we might channel a spirit of pragmatic pluralism into making sense of complex sets of evidence, robust enough to support more plausible causal inference to guide action, while accepting and adapting to the reality of the public health landscape rather than wishing it were otherwise. The traditional art of dry stone walling can serve as a metaphor for the more 'holistic sense-making' we propose.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.