Improving the effectiveness of public health efforts

State public health departments are on the front lines of ensuring effective responses to challenging problems. In order to be successful at this, accurate information about which activities are supported by relevant evidence must be available to and used by decisionmakers. The extent to which this occurs is driven by a complex interplay of organizational structure, capacity, culture, and priorities. Adjusting any of these can be costly, time-consuming, and risks unintended negative consequences. Thus, in conjunction with our colleagues at the Prevention Research Center at Washington University, we used a sophisticated computational simulation model to identify ways that state public health departments can make changes that increase their effectiveness.