Health impact assessment (HIA) on a strategic level focuses on the broad determinants of health. However, the evidence with regard to the health impacts is often necessarily 'soft'. The example of a health impact review on national housing policy in the Netherlands shows that HIA can be effective even in the absence of hard data. Strategies used to overcome the problem of not having hard data a...

OBJECTIVES We examined how different types of health information-seeking behaviors (HISBs)-no use, illness information only, wellness information only, and illness and wellness information combined-are associated with health risk factors and health indicators to determine possible motives for health information seeking. METHODS A sample of 559 Seattle-Tacoma area adults completed an Internet-...

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the Americas, has tried to promote health technology assessment (HTA) in Latin America for 25 years. A certain awareness of HTA developed in several countries because of these efforts. In the late 1990's, there was a strong movement for health reform in Latin America, and HTA became part of t...

BACKGROUND Modelling studies are used widely to help inform decisions about health care and policy and their use is increasing. However, in order for modelling to gain strength as a tool for health policy, it is critical that key model factors are transparent so that users of models can have a clear understanding of the model and its limitations.Reporting guidelines are evidence-based tools tha...

In this paper, we test the hypothesis that health technology assessment units located in hospitals tend to be more optimistic toward technologies that are currently in use in their organization than technologies that are not. The data include 108 health technologies assessed in 87 full-scale health technology assessment reports produced by the four main local health technology assessment units ...

Methods We examined data from the 2010 health risk assessment (HRA) among Vanderbilt University employees who are enrolled in the employer insurance plan. The HRA is a 39item online questionnaire developed by Wellsource, Inc. In 2010, 80% of eligible employees completed the HRA (n=16,976). We analyzed characteristics of PIA among employees, defined as individuals who reported exercising less th...

BACKGROUND Primary prevention programs at the worksite can improve employee health and reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease. Programs that include a web-based health risk assessment (HRA) with tailored feedback hold the advantage of simultaneously increasing awareness of risk and enhancing initiation of health-behaviour change. In this study we evaluated initial health-behaviour change a...

Effectively assessing children's dietary intake is essential for understanding the complex relationships among dietary behaviours and obesity. Dietary assessment accuracy decreases when children are unable or unmotivated to complete accurate self-reports. Technology-based assessment instruments for children's self-report of diet can be enhanced in light of developments in media psychology and c...

A major driver of cost growth in health care is the rapid increase in the utilisation of existing technology and not simply the adoption of new technology. Health economists and their health technology assessment colleagues have become obsessed by technology adoption questions and have largely ignored 'technology management' questions. Technology management would include the life-cycle assessme...

BACKGROUND Medical programmes that implement problem-based learning (PBL) face several challenges when introducing this innovative learning method. PBL relies on small group as the foundation of study, and tutors facilitate learning by guiding the process rather than teaching the group. One of the major challenges is the use of strategies to assess students working in small groups. Self-, peer-...