Abstract
This chapter engages with recent currents within public health evaluation research which seek to understand how ‘complex’ interventions, implemented in real-world contexts, bring about change to health. Embedded within these evaluative framings are (implicit) assumptions about ‘scale’, and how an intervention may prompt mechanisms of change occurring across different levels of the contextual ‘system’ in which the intervention is delivered. Drawing from research on a community empowerment intervention, I argue that ethnography is well suited for exploring flows of relations and interactions across different scales as an intervention unfolds dynamically, and for interrogating assumptions about scalar relations inherent in the aims of public health evaluation research.
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Acknowledgements
Grateful thanks are extended to the residents and workers of the two areas who participated in this research, to the Local Trust and to friends and colleagues who helped shape this work. This work was supported by a grant awarded by the School for Public Health Research at LSHTM, funded through the NIHR School for Public Health Research. The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health.
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Reynolds, J. (2018). Ethnographic Encounters with the ‘Community’: Implications for Considering Scale in Public Health Evaluation. In: Garnett, E., Reynolds, J., Milton, S. (eds) Ethnographies and Health. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89396-9_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89396-9_12
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