Background: The present article offers an answer to following questions in the form of a narrative description; (1) what are the methodological challenges for public health evidence synthesis? (2) Are the conventional methods adequate for synthesis of evidence pertaining to complex public health interventions? (3) Which are the new approaches/recommended approaches for public health evidence synthesis?

Methods: The studies in this review were selected by the same approach followed in a systematic review. Electronic databases namely Pubmed-Medline, ProQuest, Science direct and Scopus were searched to obtain the articles. In addition, Google scholar, Shodhganga, Cochrane handbook of systematic reviews of interventions, Handbook of Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) and bulletins of Cochrane methods symposium were also searched. Reference lists of the important articles were also followed.

Results:Forty two articles were included in the review for the narrative summarisation in terms of three identified broad headings.

Conclusions: Systematically reviewing complex public-health interventions is prone to several challenges. There exist adequate methods to address these challenges. Reviewers should employ sophisticated methods to consolidate and make best use of the available evidence.