Program Evaluation & Applied Research
Evidence for Better Programs and Policies
For more than three decades, Altarum has helped state, federal, and nonprofit partners understand how public programs workâand how to make them work better for the people they serve. We embed evaluation in every engagement so partners can generate evidence they can use and build the capacity to sustain and expand that work.
What We Do
Altarum delivers rigorous, decision-ready insights. We design and conduct mixed-methods studies, combining surveys, administrative data, focus groups, and longitudinal data, to answer questions about access, quality, behavior change, return on investment, and impact.
Our Program Evaluation & Applied Research work moves across the full research and evaluation life cycle:
- Formative research: We conduct needs assessments and environmental scans, and we talk to program participants and the team members serving them. This groundwork identifies and shapes the questions that need to be asked.
- Process and outcome evaluation: We design studies that track both implementation fidelity and the outcomes that matter to participants and decision-makers.
- Impact and ROI analysis: We model the downstream effects of programs on health, behavior, and economic value.
- Translation and dissemination: We turn findings into peer-reviewed publications, plain-language reports, briefings, and decision-support materials partners can act on.
Our team includes researchers, statisticians, dietitians, behavioral scientists, public health analysts, and economists. For each client project, we carefully select team members based on what the work requires.
Building Sustainable Capacity
Rigorous evaluation produces strong evidence. Sustainable capacity turns that evidence into action. We work alongside our partners so that the evaluation isn't a deliverable that arrives at the end of a contract. Rather, it's a tool they continue to use. We help partner teams develop evaluation plans, strengthen internal evaluation capabilities, and create the data infrastructure they need to support continuous learning.
The result is partners with the sustainable capacity to act on what they learn and to ask sharper questions over time.
Across Our Focus Areas
Our applied research and evaluation work runs through every focus area we touch, from military and Veterans health and federal nutrition programs to behavioral health, maternal and child health, and Medicare and Medicaid. Across all of it, we advance health missions by helping partners generate evidence they can use to improve programs and policies for the people they serve.