Causal Inference Methods for Understanding Health Policy Interventions

Dear Colleagues,

Identifying good governance in health depends on accurately evaluating policies for their efficiency and effectiveness. Many methodological tools are available for this purpose. Regional case studies in public health are an example in which policies are evaluated through detailed examinations of health conditions before and after the policies are implemented. In many of these analyses, rigorously identifying comparison groups whose outcomes can be contrasted with the outcome of the region undergoing the policy change is difficult. 

The ability to determine causal pathways is an essential part of public health research and is key for understanding the effect of policies. The growth of computing power combined with advances in methods theory has led to an increase in researchers’ ability to estimate causal relationships between policy variables. Although a randomized controlled trial remains the gold standard in determining causation, natural or quasi-experiments can be used to evaluate causation when it is infeasible or unethical to run such an experiment.

Increasingly popular methods for policy evaluation include the causal inference methods. These methods provide quantitative support for case studies by creating a hypothetical counterfactual scenario that simulates what the outcome path would be if it did not undergo a particular policy intervention. 

In this Special Issue, we invite researchers who are active in evaluating health interventions to submit high-quality empirical and methodological articles. Articles can be in any area of public health research, but the focus must be on either the methods for assessing, or the conducting of studies to assess the impact of policy, practices, or interventions.

Prof. Dr. Jaime Pinilla-Dominguez
Prof. Dr. Miguel Ángel Negrín-Hernández
Dr. Christian González-Martel
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• causal inference
• public health
• intervention analysis
• policy evaluation