Improving state health policy assessment: An agenda for measurement and analysis

This paper examines the scope of inquiry into the measurement and assessment of the state public health policy environment.

The researchers argue that there are gains to be made by looking systematically at policies both within and across health domains. They draw from public health and public policy literature to develop the concepts of interdomain and intradomain policy comprehensiveness and illustrate how these concepts can be used to enhance surveillance of the current public health policy environment, improve understanding of the adoption of new policies, and enhance evaluations of the impact of such policies on health outcomes.