There is no author summary for this book yet. Authors can add summaries to their books on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that the choices governments make to address infectious disease threats are necessarily and inherently informed by both scientific evidence and a host of other social, ethical, and economic considerations. Managing what are often competing goals is the stuff of politics. Because public health is political, it only makes sense to draw on the insights of political science, a discipline that seeks to systematically understand how politics and government work. However, what some have called public health political science is a relatively underdeveloped area, in part because of structural barriers that keep these two disciplines from engaging meaningfully. Thus, the major goals of this book are to provide examples of how political science perspectives can be used to better inform public health; to call on political scientists to learn from and engage in public health; and to advance the interconnection of public health and political science as scholarly disciplines. This chapter briefly explores the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of this emergent field and provides a summary sketch of the individual chapters.

Related collections

Most cited references 31

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Is Open Access

Evidence-based policymaking is not like evidence-based medicine, so how far should you go to bridge the divide between evidence and policy?

Paul Cairney, Kathryn Oliver (2017)

There is extensive health and public health literature on the ‘evidence-policy gap’, exploring the frustrating experiences of scientists trying to secure a response to the problems and solutions they raise and identifying the need for better evidence to reduce policymaker uncertainty. We offer a new perspective by using policy theory to propose research with greater impact, identifying the need to use persuasion to reduce ambiguity, and to adapt to multi-level policymaking systems. We identify insights from secondary data, namely systematic reviews, critical analysis and policy theories relevant to evidence-based policymaking. The studies are drawn primarily from countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. We combine empirical and normative elements to identify the ways in which scientists can, do and could influence policy. We identify two important dilemmas, for scientists and researchers, that arise from our initial advice. First, effective actors combine evidence with manipulative emotional appeals to influence the policy agenda – should scientists do the same, or would the reputational costs outweigh the policy benefits? Second, when adapting to multi-level policymaking, should scientists prioritise ‘evidence-based’ policymaking above other factors? The latter includes governance principles such the ‘co-production’ of policy between local public bodies, interest groups and service users. This process may be based primarily on values and involve actors with no commitment to a hierarchy of evidence. We conclude that successful engagement in ‘evidence-based policymaking’ requires pragmatism, combining scientific evidence with governance principles, and persuasion to translate complex evidence into simple stories. To maximise the use of scientific evidence in health and public health policy, researchers should recognise the tendency of policymakers to base judgements on their beliefs, and shortcuts based on their emotions and familiarity with information; learn ‘where the action is’, and be prepared to engage in long-term strategies to be able to influence policy; and, in both cases, decide how far you are willing to go to persuade policymakers to act and secure a hierarchy of evidence underpinning policy. These are value-driven and political, not just ‘evidence-based’, choices.

0 comments Cited 160 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Is Open Access

Health policy – why research it and how: health political science

Evelyne de Leeuw, Carole Clavier, Eric Breton (2014)

The establishment of policy is key to the implementation of actions for health. We review the nature of policy and the definition and directions of health policy. In doing so, we explicitly cast a health political science gaze on setting parameters for researching policy change for health. A brief overview of core theories of the policy process for health promotion is presented, and illustrated with empirical evidence. The key arguments are that (a) policy is not an intervention, but drives intervention development and implementation; (b) understanding policy processes and their pertinent theories is pivotal for the potential to influence policy change; (c) those theories and associated empirical work need to recognise the wicked, multi-level, and incremental nature of elements in the process; and, therefore, (d) the public health, health promotion, and education research toolbox should more explicitly embrace health political science insights. The rigorous application of insights from and theories of the policy process will enhance our understanding of not just how, but also why health policy is structured and implemented the way it is.

0 comments Cited 74 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Public health policy research: making the case for a political science approach.

Carole Clavier, F Bernier (2011)

The past few years have seen the emergence of claims that the political determinants of health do not get due consideration and a growing demand for better insights into public policy analysis in the health research field. Several public health and health promotion researchers are calling for better training and a stronger research culture in health policy. The development of these studies tends to be more advanced in health promotion than in other areas of public health research, but researchers are still commonly caught in a naïve, idealistic and narrow view of public policy. This article argues that the political science discipline has developed a specific approach to public policy analysis that can help to open up unexplored levers of influence for public health research and practice and that can contribute to a better understanding of public policy as a determinant of health. It describes and critiques the public health model of policy analysis, analyzes political science's specific approach to public policy analysis, and discusses how the politics of research provides opportunities and barriers to the integration of political science's distinctive contributions to policy analysis in health promotion.