Monday, June 9, 2008

[EQ] Evidence and Healthy Public Policy: Insights from Health and Political Sciences

Evidence and Healthy Public Policy: Insights from Health and Political Sciences

 

Patrick Fafard, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa
 Research Fellow, Canadian Policy Research Networks

National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy - May 2008

 

Available online as PDF file [33p.] at: http://www.cprn.org/documents/50036_EN.pdf

 

“……This paper focuses on the requirements of healthy public policy, and more importantly the role of evidence, especially scientific evidence in the development of such policies. Simply put, this paper offers a critical account of the extent to which scientific evidence can have an impact on public policy. Drawing on health sciences literature on healthy public policy and political science literature on policy-making, this paper seeks to build a bridge between the worldview of health

sciences4 and the worldview of political (and policy) science in order to offer some insight into how policy gets made and thereby offer some guideposts to those who wish to develop and promote healthy public policy. In particular, this paper focuses on two linked questions.

 

First, in order to provide advice to those who might wish to promote healthy public policies, what do we know about how policy gets made and how and where evidence is most effectively used? Specifically, what are some of the available theories, or absent formal theories, models and frameworks, of the policy process and what role does evidence play in each?

 

Second, building on the contemporary preoccupation with evidence-based decision-making (and, at least in some quarters, evidence-based public policy), in thinking about how public policy is made, what constitutes “evidence” and what is the role of evidence in the policy process?.........”

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1 MODELS OF POLICY-MAKING — THE VIEW FROM HEALTH SCIENCES 4

2 MODELS OF POLICY-MAKING — THE STAGES MODEL

2.1 Evidence and agenda setting

2.2 Evidence and policy formulation

2.3 Evidence and decision-making

2.4 Evidence and policy implementation

2.5 Evidence and policy-making in a stages model — General observations

3 MODELS OF POLICY-MAKING — THE ADVOCACY COALITION FRAMEWORK AND THE ARGUMENTATIVE TURN

3.1 Advocacy coalition framework

3.2 Evidence in advocacy coalition frameworks

3.3 The argumentative turn and a deliberative approach to policy-making

3.4 Evidence in discursive policy-making

CONCLUSIONS

REFERENCES

 

 

 

*      *      *     *

This message from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO/WHO, is part of an effort to disseminate
information Related to: Equity; Health inequality; Socioeconomic inequality in health; Socioeconomic
health differentials; Gender; Violence; Poverty; Health Economics; Health Legislation; Ethnicity; Ethics;
Information Technology - Virtual libraries; Research & Science issues.  [DD/ IKM Area]

“Materials provided in this electronic list are provided "as is". Unless expressly stated otherwise, the findings
and interpretations included in the Materials are those of the authors and not necessarily of The Pan American
Health Organization PAHO/WHO or its country members”.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PAHO/WHO Website: http://www.paho.org/

EQUITY List - Archives - Join/remove: http://listserv.paho.org/Archives/equidad.html

 

 

 

    IMPORTANT: This transmission is for use by the intended recipient and it may contain privileged, proprietary or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient or a person responsible for delivering this transmission to the intended recipient, you may not disclose, copy or distribute this transmission or take any action in reliance on it. If you received this transmission in error, please notify us immediately by email to infosec@paho.org, and please dispose of and delete this transmission. Thank you.  

No comments: