CECAN Fellowship: Developing advocacy for whole-systems and complex evaluations in the challenging world of public health
In my current role within the Central Evaluation Team at Public Health Wales, a key responsibility is to identify and advocate for cutting-edge approaches and methodologies that can be used to evaluate complex public health interventions and policies. The complex landscape of overlapping public health interventions and policies, coupled with the complexity of human behaviour, make it difficult for evaluations to extrapolate the true impact of interventions. In my experience, our evaluation approaches do not always show an appreciation for this complexity. I am finding that practitioners are often looking for evaluations that provide short-term findings, objective truths and evidence that indicates whether the intended outcomes of an intervention alone are being realised. I am striving to advocate for whole-systems approaches and evaluations that reflect these complexities and the potential unintended consequences of our interventions. I would like to understand how CECAN’s experts have advocated for whole-systems approaches – both within the field of public health and other domains – so that I can apply this learning to become a better advocate in Public Health Wales and across the Welsh NHS.
About Jack
Jack is a Senior Research and Evaluation Officer in the Research and Evaluation Division at Public Health Wales. The Evaluation Team conducts and supports high-quality evaluations of complex public health interventions and policies, while also driving good evaluation practice across the organisation and wider Welsh NHS. Jack has contributed to evaluations across a broad range of public health priorities, including mental wellbeing, cancer prehabilitation, healthy weight, contraception and health-promoting schools. Jack’s interest in whole-systems approaches and complexity-based evaluation stems from his PhD, where he investigated the global implementation of system-based approaches to promoting physical activity. Since completing his Doctorate in 2024, Jack strives to advocate for whole-systems approaches and evaluation methods that reflect the complexity of public health behaviours and systems. Jack has a particular interest in contemporary research and evaluation methods such as system mapping and ripple effect mapping and is keen to develop his own experience and support colleagues to implement these approaches more regularly across the Welsh NHS.
