rlabonté et al entitle their paper in this issue of the international journal of health policy and management “the trans-pacific partnership: is it everything we feared for health?” tantalisingly, they do not directly answer the question they pose, and in this commentary, we suggest that it is the wrong question; we should not ‘fear’ the trans-pacific partnership (tpp) at all, rather we should ...

Written by a group of political science researchers, this commentary focuses on the contributions of political science to public health and proposes research avenues to increase those contributions. Despite progress, the links between researchers from these two fields develop only slowly. Divergences between the approach of political science to public policy and the expectations that public hea...

The call for community-based participatory research approaches to address cancer health disparities is increasing as concern grows for the limited effectiveness of existing public health practice and research in communities that experience a disparate burden of disease. A national study of participatory research projects, Research for Improved Health, funded by the National Institutes of Health...

the aim of this study is to map the chronological achievements of public health over the past 100 years in a small island state and to outline emerging themes. a retrospective analysis of data was conducted from the published population and vital statistics reports of the central statistical office for the period of 1953-2006, as well as all available published reports of the ministry of health...

the focus on public policy and health equity is discussed in reference to the current global health policy discussion on universal health coverage (uhc). this initiative has strong commitment from the leadership of the international organizations involved, but a lack of policy clarity outside of the health financing component may limit the initiative’s impact on health inequity. in order to add...

RLabonté et al entitle their paper in this issue of the International Journal of Health Policy and Management “The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Is It Everything We Feared for Health?” Tantalisingly, they do not directly answer the question they pose, and in this commentary, we suggest that it is the wrong question; we should not ‘fear’ the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) at all, rather we should ...

There has been a recent upsurge of advocacy from trialists and policy ‘modernisers’ for far more use of RCTs as the basis for health and wider public policy. This is exemplified by the UK Cabinet Office’s report ‘Test, Learn, Adapt’ (2012). Mainstream policy makers are now being told that they should make policy by experimenting like scientists. Drawing on experience as an applied health servic...

The Institute of Medicine has recommended that policy decisions about improvement of national public health systems be guided by sound scientific evidence. However, to date there is no national research agenda to help guide public health systems. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was called upon to lead a collaborative consensus-based process to define key research questions and es...