BACKGROUND There is a need to understand scientific evidence in light of the context within which it will be used. Deliberative dialogues are a promising strategy that can be used to meet this evidence interpretation challenge. METHODS We evaluated a deliberative dialogue held by a transnational violence prevention network. The deliberative dialogue included researchers and knowledge user par...

In the last five years, medical care policies for prisons in the Argentine Federal Penitentiary Service were developed by the previous Medical Care Assistance Office of this Institution to improve primary medical healthcare. Policies were applied with heterogeneous criteria in comparison to the ones established by the Ministry of Health. This may be why I am interested in taking a deeper look a...

INTRODUCTION Meeting the health-related Millennium Development Goals in Africa calls for better access to and higher utilisation of quality evidence. The mechanisms through which research evidence can effectively guide public health policy and implementation of health programmes are not fully understood. Challenges to the use of evidence to inform policy and practice include the lack of a commo...

At a time when the U.S. Supreme Court stands accused of undermining the legitimacy of American democracy, it might seem superfluous to question its wisdom in the interpretation of more mundane matters of public policy. But the Court is rarely given an opportunity to tinker with electoral outcomes. By contrast, it is constantly in the business of interpreting congressional legislation. Doing so ...

Many of the societal level factors that affect health - the 'social determinants of health (SDH)' - exist outside the health sector, across diverse portfolios of government, and other major institutions including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the private sector. This has created growing interest in how to create and implement public policies which will drive better and fairer health...

Catholic healthcare providers today can live out their vision and values only if they become public policy advocates. They must learn how to shape effective public policy to help heal the ailing U.S. healthcare system. Although from a political perspective they might feel ill-equipped to advocate in the public policy arena, Catholic healthcare providers are richly endowed from the perspective o...

The Public Policy Institute of California is dedicated to informing and improving public policy in California through independent, objective, nonpartisan research on major economic, social, and political issues. The institute's goal is to raise public awareness and to give elected representatives and other decisionmakers a more informed basis for developing policies and programs. The institute'...

A key characteristic of Latin American countries has been the association between extreme inequality and intense poverty, along with the inability of previous social and economic policies to alleviate these conditions. In recent decades, fiscal adjustment policies proposed by international financial agencies have led to monetary stability, but by fo-cusing solely on economic growth, they have i...

International collaborative health research is justifiably expected to help reduce global health inequities. Investment in health policy and systems research in developing countries is essential to this process but, currently, funding for international research is mainly channelled towards the development of new medical interventions. This imbalance is largely due to research legislation and po...

Most countries worldwide have recognised the significance of contextual social determinants of health (SDH) on population health. This essay challenges current public health views focused on individual risk-factors and motivates an evidence-informed debate in this matter. I argue that despite both international consensus and a growing body of evidence to support the relevance of addressing such...