The Precautionary Principle in its simplest form states: "When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically". This Principle is the basis for European environmental law, and plays an increasing role in developing environmental health policies as w...

How best to involve the public in local health policy development and decision-making is an ongoing challenge for health systems. In the current literature on this topic, there is discussion of the lack of rigorous evaluations upon which to draw generalizable conclusions about what public participation methods work best and for what kinds of outcomes. We believe that for evaluation research on ...

Health impact assessment (HIA) and comparative risk assessment (CRA) are important tools with which governments and communities can compare and integrate different sources of information about various health impacts into a single framework for policy-makers and planners. Both tools have strengths that may be combined usefully when conducting comprehensive assessments of decisions that affect co...

Since their inception, one of the major conceptual bases for standards-based reforms has been the notion of alignment. In a local sense, alignment means that in order to improve student achievement and learning, school districts need to have clear standards of attainment with which their curriculum and accountability measures must align. At the state level, this notion of alignment or coherence...

By drawing on an empiricist tradition, and on the literature discussing the philosophical problems of marketing knowledge, we seek to develop practical guidelines for developing empirical generalisations. In particular we suggest three criteria for the development of marketing knowledge: ensuring falsifiability and theoretical competition; overcoming uncertainty through replication; and using e...

BACKGROUND In England between 2010 and 2013, just over one million recipients of the main out-of-work disability benefit had their eligibility reassessed using a new functional checklist-the Work Capability Assessment. Doctors and disability rights organisations have raised concerns that this has had an adverse effect on the mental health of claimants, but there are no population level studies ...

Biochar application to agricultural soils is an interesting emerging technology with promising potential for long-term carbon storage, sustainable waste disposal, and soil fertility enhancement. Extensive information exists in the literature on the highly beneficial properties of biochar. Nevertheless, systematic application of biochar on European agricultural soils may have wide ranging policy...

I would like to thank the CJPH for their commitment to population health intervention research (PHIR). Publication of the special issue “Population Health Intervention Research: Advancing the Field” (CJPH, Vol. 103, Supplement 1, September/October 2012) sheds light on elements in need of clarification and debate among population health intervention researchers. Despite a high level of conceptua...

Large-scale public policy changes are often recommended to improve public health. Despite varying widely-from tobacco taxes to poverty-relief programs-such policies present a common dilemma to public health researchers: how to evaluate their health effects when randomized controlled trials are not possible. Here, we review the state of knowledge and experience of public health researchers who r...