To what extent are complex public health interventions transferable across contexts? Protocol of an interdisciplinary study of a school-based nutritional health intervention in France
Background: Governments across Europe have attempted to address the obesogenic environment through a variety of policy measures over the last two decades. A growing literature advocates for complex population interventions in public health. Such approaches embrace the need for interventions that can operate within the complexity of real-life situations as well as capturing and tracking interactions between an intervention and its context. Aim: This paper describes the original interdisciplinary methodological approach of a research project. The study was designed to ascertain whether complex public health interventions can be transferred from one local context to another while remaining loyal to their initial objectives. Method: An integrated interdisciplinary qualitative design was established to elaborate and answer the research questions. Three disciplinary strands were involved: Political Science, Public Health and Sociology. The three strands worked together while applying their specific methodological approaches. Results: The Political Science strand analysed the public health nutrition intervention taking a socio-historic policy studies top-down perspective. The Public Health Strand developed a method of analysing the three interventions through a co-construction process with the participants. This allows for the key functions, forms and context of each intervention to be identified and compared. The Sociology strand performed ethnographic methods to observe and analyse the deployment and activities linked with each intervention across sites. Together the three strands provide an interdisciplinary analysis of the length and breadth of the interventional scope with which to answer the research questions. Discussion: Here, we discuss the operational challenges involved in the project, including the difficulties encountered with the interdisciplinary approach, as well as field work challenges.