Preface

As the costs and resources of delivering health services have increased over the years, the importance of evaluating in the health sector has become essential. Evaluation includes assessing health services, interventions, and burden of disease comprising the measurement of death, disability, and loss of health due to diseases, injuries, and risk factors.

An evaluation provides a systematic process of assessing the efficacy and efficiency of health services, including an assessment of their impact on beneficiaries, whether it be individuals or communities. The methods of evaluating health services and disease burden, including data collection and analysis, have evolved in line with the complexity of delivering health care and health interventions. The rich picture that different evaluation methods derive has become critical in informing stakeholders and policy makers about the value of a particular program or intervention. Evaluation allows the improvement of disease prevention, control of disease outbreaks, and helps in addressing health inequities.

In this book, various evaluation studies are detailed, providing an excellent resource for both evaluation practitioners and academics alike. The book mainly focuses on exemplifying how and where evaluation is used rather than the methodology as such. However, a collection of economic evaluation focused chapters presents a comprehensive resource for readers who are interested in this area. Added to this is a discussion of novel evaluation approaches that can be used to assess the quality of programs, and burden of diseases. The evaluation of burden of disease is taken in a broad perspective so that different analyses are described in this book. The contributions go from estimating the cost of illness in Korea, the burden of morbidity in India, to the cost of malaria and cholera outbreaks in Mozambique.

The geographical range and variety of case studies showcase how evaluation has become integral for health service planning and assessment and assists public health policy makers to decide how to use limited resources to minimize burden and inequity. This book will act as a ready resource for both experienced workers and those intending to learn about health service evaluation.

> **Sandeep Reddy** Associate Professor, School of Medicine, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia
