Use of research to inform public policymaking

Sustainability science: an integrated approach for health-programme planning

“…Health-programme sustainability is therefore related to the general concept of local applicability, and health programmes need to be adapted to changing circumstances or diff erent locations. 74,75 Together with the support of successful health programmes lie the challenges of enabling them to engage local and national populations in ways that facilitate growth. 61 Key questions are: can a health programme endure change in the local community or institutions?…”

Use of evidence in WHO recommendations

“…Given that these guidelines may be most germane to the development of clinical practice guidelines and public health recommendations, future iterations of the guidelines will need to incorporate the emerging research literature about developing policy recommendations. 12 …”

“…Systematic reviews have several advantages over other approaches to amassing evidence of effects. [11][12][13] Firstly, systematic reviews reduce the risk of bias in selecting studies and interpreting their results. Secondly, they reduce the risk of being misled by the play of chance in identifying studies for inclusion, or the risk of focusing on a limited subset of relevant evidence.…”

“…When there is evidence, judgements are still required about the quality of the evidence and, particularly for public health and health policy topics, its applicability in different contexts. 12 Evidence of effects needs to be complemented by information about needs, factors that may affect whether effectiveness will be realized in the field, available resources, costs, and the values of those who will be affected by the recommendations. Processes that allow for the explicit incorporation of these other types of information, particularly values, have (like systematic reviews) emerged as central to the development of recommendations.…”

Empirically evaluating the impact of adjudicative tribunals in the health sector: context, challenges and opportunities

“…A systematic review on the effect of adjudicative tribunals in the health sector, for example, would be a disciplined and rigorous approach to assess the current state of research evidence in this area and tracking developments in it over time (Lavis et al, 2004;Petticrew and Roberts, 2008). This tool applies the scientific method to gathering, appraising and synthesizing what is known (and what is not known) on a particular topic such that publication and selection bias are limited (Lavis et al, 2005;Rothstein et al, 2005).…”