The HEART Study: Measuring the Impact of Public Health Programming

Despite the availability of highly effective biomedical prevention and treatment interventions for infectious diseases, their integration into public health programming has resulted in varied levels of health benefit across different settings. While improving outcomes remains a cornerstone of public health, there is a critical need for a scientifically rigorous, evidence-informed tool that can assess the operational capability of public health efforts. Such an instrument would support decision-makers in proactively identifying implementation challenges, aligning local strengths and gaps with context-specific needs, and optimizing the allocation of resources to improve consistency in health results. This project addresses that need by developing and evaluating the HEART Tool, a novel approach to assessing public health program capability. The study will: (1) apply structured, mixed methods to define and organize capability into measurable domains; (2) develop and test the content and format of the HEART tool, including preliminary psychometric validation; and (3) pilot and refine HEART across multiple public health settings. The anticipated outcome is a validated, pragmatic measure that can be used in both community- based and healthcare environments to guide planning and improve implementation outcomes. The principal investigator brings the necessary expertise to lead this work, supported by an interdisciplinary team with backgrounds in infectious disease prevention, measurement development, and real-world implementation. This proposal aligns with the New Innovator Award’s goals to advance transformative, conceptually novel, and scientifically promising approaches to major challenges in population health.