The use of evaluation methods for the overall assessment of health policy: potential and limitations

BACKGROUND: The implementation of public policies requires special attention from public authorities to ensure their transparency, effectiveness and efficiency. For this reason, efforts to evaluate the abovementioned politics gained attention and importance. Similar processes, by their very nature, are also noticeable in the area of health policy, however, the nature of the solutions used raises questions about the extent to which they allow to capture the assessed phenomenon in a holistic way. The current approach to the problem of evaluating health policy shows a tendency to break down this phenomenon into components including policies, programs or projects. The purpose of this publication was to assess the main methodological approaches used in evaluation studies in terms of their usefulness and limitations in conducting overall assessment of health policy. MAIN BODY: The publication divides evaluation methods based on three main criteria identified in the literature—time, purpose and scope of evaluation. Methodological approaches to evaluation activities detailed on this basis are discussed from the point of view of their characteristics, usefulness and limitations in the creation of comprehensive health policy assessments. The growing awareness of the need for a different approach to evaluation, which was confirmed by the course of the discourse on evaluation in public health, was also pointed out. CONCLUSION: Given the complexity of the matter making up the health policy, attempts aimed at its overall assessment should be based on an approach integrating many approaches, while ensuring coordination of evaluation activities that should be subject to common assumptions.