The issue of the allocation of resources in health care is here to stay. The goal of this study was to explore the views of physicians on several topics that have arisen in the debate on the allocation of scarce resources and to compare these with the views of policy makers. We asked physicians (oncologists, cardiologists, and nursing home physicians) and policy makers to participate in an inte...

background health policies are important instruments for improving population health. however, experience suggests that policies designed for the whole population do not always benefit the most vulnerable. participation of vulnerable groups in the policy-making process provides an opportunity for them to influence decisions related to their health, and also to exercise their rights. this paper ...

ecosystems is challenging because park managers cannot accurately determine ecosystem states and predict the outcomes of management actions due to uncertainty. Four sources of uncertainty arise. First, variability in social, demographic, ecological, and economic factors makes it difficult to infer the state of an ecosystem from observed conditions and predict ecosystem responses to management a...

Awareness of potential biases is important for both researchers and policy-makers in public health: for researchers when designing and conducting studies, and for policy-makers when reading study reports and making decisions. This paper explains the meaning and importance of epidemiologic bias in public health and discusses how it arises and what can be done to minimize it. Examples of counting...

background despite the significant role “values” play in decision-making no definition or attributes regarding the concept have been provided in health policy-making. this study aimed to clarify the defining attributes of a concept of value and its irrelevant structures in health policy-making. we anticipate our findings will help reduce the semantic ambiguities associated with the use of “valu...

New tools to educate immunization managers in developing countries are needed to keep these health policy makers current on the latest vaccines and procedures, and to provide support in decision making. The goal of the AIM e-Learning Project is to deliver up-to-date and engaging web-delivered media, with solid instructional design, to an audience relatively new to web-based learning. Accuracy o...

Background This paper investigates whether state legislators find testimony influential, to what extent testimony influences policy-makers’ decisions, and defines the features of testimony important in affecting policy-makers’ decisions.   Methods We used a mixed method approach to analyze responses from 862 state-level legislators in the United States (U.S.). Data were collected via a phone su...

In 2010, Utah taxpayers’ spent over $1.3 billion relating to criminal justice in areas of police, courts, and corrections. This $470 per capita expense is an important and necessary component of public safety cost and is below what other states spend on a per capita level. Nonetheless, with shrinking budgets in the face of slow economic growth, Utah policy makers must be increasingly diligent w...