Practicality
Practicality is to the degree to which the intervention can be carried out using existing resources (Bowen et al., 2009). The New Brunswick , Intervention for Health Enhancement After Leaving , was implemented with promising outcomes
in existing contexts with the addition of registered nurses at each site. The intervention implem entation profile was consistent with the plan. The average cost in Canadian dollars per
woman for the NB iHEAL was $3,020 (see Table 5), almost $2,000 less than the yearly estimated costs of health services for women after leaving attributable violence (Varcoe
et al., 2011). Still, given the per-woman cost and number of contact hours, policymakers were sceptical of the intervention’s practicality in the existing fiscal climate. Our limited data on use of other health services made it impossible to account for total health services costs or to calculate preversus post-intervention change in health care costs. There is a pressing need to collect these data in future studies. The team also questioned whether changes in health care
use would be visible 6 months following completion of the Intervention for Health Enhancement After Leaving . The rural nature of NB, and women’s preference for
meeting at home, resulted in interventionist travel costs that accounted for 14% of intervention cost ($436 per woman). One suggested strategy to lower the costs of the Intervention for Health Enhancement After Leaving was paying for women’s travel costs to the interventionist, thereby saving on costs of interventionist travel time.