Emerald Snow

Community Health Sciences, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health; Latin American Studies Interdepartmental Program

University of California, Los Angeles 

 

Evolutionary academics have long advocated for the application of evolutionary theory to medicine and public health, yet the bridge between research and practice appears wide (Gibson & Lawson, 2014; Nesse & Stearns, 2008). While clinicians are becoming more active in the world of evolutionary medicine, public health practitioners largely remain unaware of evolution and its potential application. For this reason I propose to create a tool, the Ev-PH Roadmap, for public health practitioners which will assist them with incorporating evolutionary science in community/population health intervention design. The Ev-PH Roadmap will guide practitioners towards both evolutionary literature and experts pertaining to their specific topics of interest within public health. The creation of the Ev-PH Roadmap will be a collaborative educational endeavor utilizing the Delphi Method (Helmer-Hirschberg, 1967). In this presentation I aim to: 1) review basic principles of public health program planning, including proximate theories/models used in program design such as PRECEDE-PROCEED; 2) describe the proposed methods of designing the Ev-PH Roadmap; and 3) discuss how to best disseminate the Ev-PH Roadmap after its design. It is my goal to offer a pragmatic solution, whose benefits exceed limitations, for bridging the worlds of evolutionary science and public health practice.