Select a section: What is Intervention MICA? How to use Intervention MICA What is an intervention? What is evidence? Evidence is most commonly thought of as proof supporting a claim or belief. For public health interventions, evidence typically refers to the effectiveness of an intervention in achieving an outcome that will create lasting changes in the health of the population. This evidence is usually documented in the scientific literature (e.g., scientific journals, books, government reports).

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The Guide to Community Preventive Services (Community Guide) reflects recommendations based on evidence gathered in rigorous and systematic scientific reviews of published studies (e.g., study designs used, the number of studies, the consistency of the findings, the effect sizes found and expert opinion). The rigorous approach of the Community Guide to defining evidence summarizes what is known about the effectiveness, economic efficiency and feasibility of interventions to promote community health and prevent disease. Recommendations made by the Task Force are considered the gold standard for interventions because of the systematic criteria used for evaluation.

Another similar review, the Evidence-Based Practice Program, takes into consideration studies that utilize a variety of study designs in the review of evidence for cancer control interventions. By incorporating a broader definition of evidence in determining criteria for inclusion, other types of interventions (e.g., those that demonstrate positive health or behavioral outcomes but have less rigorous evaluation designs, those on a federal agency “best practices list” or those that reflect an insufficient period of time between intervention and evaluation to demonstrate a sizeable impact) may be recommended.

Despite the relatively new application of evidence-based public health interventions, the focus has already expanded from scientific credibility alone to the inclusion of more practical considerations. Often, the interventions published in the scientific literature are conducted in academic or research settings supported by skilled evaluators, space, equipment, technology, funding and other resources. In community-based settings, personnel or material resources, financial costs, training and other implementation concerns may pose challenges to conducting or evaluating an intervention.

As a result, many public health professionals have found other ways to describe or demonstrate the effectiveness of their interventions. The terms best practice, promising practice, exemplary practice and model intervention are also used interchangeably with evidence in public health settings. These recommendations may be based on evidence that the intervention has been developed, implemented and evaluated according to behavioral science theories or models that have been successful in creating changes in health-related outcomes in other communities.

Because definitions of best practices, promising practices, exemplary practices and model interventions often have greater variation and less specificity, the application of these concepts to assessing the effectiveness of interventions has been limited. These various definitions provided for “evidence” suggest the emergence of an evidence-based continuum, ranging from methodological criteria based on a traditional scientific paradigm (e.g., a randomized, controlled trial) to descriptive criteria documented through process-oriented reports (e.g., best practices). See the table below for more definitions.