Over twenty years evidence based practice has become established as a dominant frame of evaluation within health services management and public health. Its influence extends to all aspects of information and communication. Evidence Based Health Information (EBHI) seeks to get the best available evidence used by patients, clinicians, managers and policy makers and to use evidence based methods to communicate them. Increasingly the public health community is shifting its collective attention to so-called complex interventions, from ‘what works’ to ‘what works for whom under what circumstances’. The author briefly reviews the background to these developments before giving examples of the practical value of this wide lens approach. The author uses a recent case study to illustrate how health service managers and public health decision makers can benefit practically from recommendations produced as a result of using a complex interventions based approach.
