Evaluation of the public health achievements made by projects supported by a federal contract mechanism at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USA.

In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established the Achieving Public Health Impact through Research (APHIR) contract mechanism. APHIR provides CDC's Centers, Institute, and Offices (CIOs) a mechanism that supports multiyear, high impact public health research. Awarded projects supported research on a wide range of topics (e.g., cancer surveillance, HIV education programs, development of biological assays, and evaluation of traumatic brain injury prevention programs) and achieved diverse outcomes (e.g., contribution to the body of knowledge in their field, changes in practice and health service delivery, and capacity building). This article describes how existing impact frameworks and a variety of methods and tools (key informant interviews, online survey, bibliometric analysis, Altmetric and document reviews) were used to identify the outcomes achieved by awarded projects. The approach discussed in this paper can be used to evaluate projects that involve a diversity of activities and outcomes.