Um framework para análise multidimensional de intervenções em saúde pública

Abstract

Promoting awareness, increasing knowledge, and encouraging the adoption of healthy attitudes and behaviors are some of the objectives of public health interventions. However, to analyze the scope of an intervention, it is necessary to go beyond the epidemiological data since this set, by itself, may not demonstrate the absolute magnitude of the results. It is necessary to discuss other data sources, variables of interest, and dimensions that the intervention can achieve. Thus, assessing the scope of a public health intervention from a multidimensional perspective through the time series approach can help guide the development of more eective interventions in the public health response. In this context, this thesis presents a framework for the multidimensional evaluation of public health interventions, exploring variables of interest that are possibly impacted by interventions. This framework is supported by a software called Hermes, responsible for processing the data in a complete lifecycle and showing its results in a visual dashboard that allows decision makers to assess the eect over time before and after campaigns and analyze possible correlations between variables of interest. To understand the current state of the art and guide research in this domain, we conducted a systematic literature review that explores the use of information technology approaches to analyze the impact of public health campaigns. This study summarizes variables of interest, campaign data, techniques, and tools used to evaluate public health interventions. We then conducted three studies to analyze a health intervention launched in Brazil called “Sífilis Não!”. The use of computational methods implemented in Hermes enabled the analysis of data of heterogeneous nature to examine the public health response and its results throughout the country, in addition to providing a powerful tool in planning and monitoring health interventions, which can be transferred to other public health challenges. Furthermore, the studies showed evidence of behavior change in the population considering epidemiological and communication aspects, in addition to evaluating the correlation between the variables of interest raised during this research, strengthening the need for a multidimensional analysis. Finally, we also analyzed epidemiological and communication data on hepatitis in Brazil in order to carry out a case study using the proposed framework outside the context of syphilis. The results of this thesis contribute to a more comprehensive analysis of the scope of public health interventions and thus allow policymakers to re-examine awareness-raising strategies developed to alert people to health care and behavioral changes, as well as better target use resources eectively.