Co-Creation of Public Health Interventions: Protocols, Practice and Evaluation

Co-creation is now widely used in public health intervention research, but many studies still report participation as a broad value rather than as a reproducible method. The key gap is not simply whether communities are engaged, but how co-creation is planned, documented, adapted, evaluated, and translated across intervention contexts. This limits comparison between studies and makes it harder to judge which participatory choices improve relevance, equity, uptake, and sustainability.

This Research Topic focuses on co-creation as a structured intervention-development process. It seeks protocols, process evaluations, and method-led studies that make each stage of co-creation explicit: who is involved, when, how decisions are shared, how power is negotiated, and how community input changes the intervention. We particularly welcome contributions developed with researchers, practitioners, and communities in low- and middle-income countries and with minoritised, marginalised, or vulnerable populations.

We aim to advance the science and practice of evidence-informed co-creation by moving beyond descriptive accounts toward transparent, theory-informed, and reproducible applications of co-creation, co-design, and co-production in public health interventions. It asks contributors to show how participatory methods are selected, operationalised, evaluated, and translated into action across diverse health contexts. Distinct from existing collections focused on community engagement models, knowledge partnerships, retrospective implementation reflections, or co-design in health services, this Research Topic centres on prospective, transferable co-creation protocols and process-evaluation methods for population-level public health interventions. It seeks work that clarifies terminology, reports decision-making processes, examines power-sharing, and links co-creation choices to implementation outcomes, equity, scalability, and sustained community benefit. Recent advances—including digital participation tools, participatory implementation science, realist and process evaluation, trauma-informed practice, and equity-centred design—offer timely opportunities to strengthen the quality and impact of co-created public health interventions.

This Research Topic welcomes empirical, theoretical, methodological, protocol, and evaluation-focused manuscripts examining how co-creation can strengthen the design, implementation, adaptation, and evaluation of population-level public health interventions. Submissions should make the co-creation process explicit, not simply report that engagement occurred. We are particularly interested in work that shows who was involved, how decisions were shared, how power and inclusion were addressed, and how co-creation shaped intervention relevance, equity, uptake, sustainability, or scale-up. General reports of community engagement, patient/public involvement in health services, or implementation lessons without an explicit co-creation method are less suitable.

Suitable themes for manuscripts include, but are not limited to:

• Protocols, reporting standards, and methodological approaches to co-creation: How should co-creation be defined, planned, documented, and reported so that methods can be replicated, compared, and adapted across public health settings? What frameworks best support meaningful participation across different contexts?

• Co-creation across the intervention cycle: How can relevant actors be involved in identifying priorities, designing intervention components, supporting implementation, interpreting findings, and shaping scale-up?

• Equity, inclusion, and power-sharing: How can co-creation address power imbalances and ensure the participation of marginalised or vulnerable members of society? What ethical challenges arise when working with communities affected by health inequalities?

• Lived experience and knowledge integration: How can lived experience be integrated alongside academic, clinical, policy, and practitioner knowledge? What forms of community knowledge are often overlooked in intervention design?

• Co-creation in implementation and adaptation: How can engagement of relevant partners improve intervention fit, feasibility, acceptability, fidelity, and adaptation in real-world settings? What role do community partners play during implementation?

• Digital and hybrid approaches to engagement: What opportunities and risks are associated with digital, remote, or hybrid forms of co-creation?

• Evaluation of co-created processes or co-created interventions: How should the quality, process, outcomes, and impact of co-creation be evaluated? What indicators can capture participation, partnership quality, implementation outcomes, and community-level change?

• Sustainability, governance, and scale-up: How can co-created interventions be sustained beyond short-term projects? What governance models, funding structures, and institutional practices support long-term community partnership? How can the co-creation process or co-created interventions be adapted or scaled to new contexts?