During a workshop held in February 2009, health and social care decision makers were asked to identify appraisal criteria they would find most useful in assessing preventative interventions and to give a clear definition for each criterion. Attendees included Directors of Commissioning, Public Health and Social Services. These generated a long list of approximately 40 different types of information that decision makers considered important when making investment decisions. These were grouped thematically in the following ways:

• Impact on outcomes (e.g. health, education).
• Distribution of impact (e.g. impact on different age groups, genders).
• Impact on access (e.g. convenience of access, waiting times).
• Timing of outcome.
• Directness of impact (e.g. impact on those targeted, impacts on others).
• Proportion benefiting (e.g. incidence of health problem, prevalence of health problem).
• Feasibility (e.g. time required to deliver, skills required to deliver).
• Cost (e.g. cost to healthcare providers, future healthcare costs).