36 research outputs found
Between Consensus and Contestation
Purpose â Noting that discussions of public participation and priority setting typically presuppose
certain political theories of democracy, the purpose of this paper is to discuss two theories: the
consensual and the agonistic. The distinction is illuminating when considering the difference between
institutionalized public participation and contestatory participation.
Design/methodology/approach â The approach is a theoretical reconstruction of two ways of
thinking about public participation in relation to priority setting in health care, drawing on the work of
Habermas, a deliberative theorist, and Mouffe, a theorist of agonism.
Findings â The different theoretical approaches can be associated with different ways of
understanding priority setting. In particular, agonistic democratic theory would understand priority
setting as system of inclusions and exclusions rather than the determination of a consensus of social
values, which is the typical deliberative way of thinking about the issues.
Originality/value â The paper shows the value of drawing out explicitly the tacit assumptions of
practices of political participation in order to reveal their scope and limitations. It suggests that making
such theoretical presuppositions explicit has value for health services management in recognizing
these implicit choices
Patterns of Public Participation: Opportunity Structures and Mobilization from a Cross-National Perspective
PURPOSE: The paper summarizes data from twelve countries, chosen to exhibit wide variation, on the role and place of public participation in the setting of priorities. It seeks to exhibit cross-national patterns in respect of public participation, linking those differences to institutional features of the countries concerned. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The approach is an example of case-orientated qualitative assessment of participation practices. It derives its data from the presentation of country case studies by experts on each system. The country cases are located within the historical development of democracy in each country. FINDINGS: Patterns of participation are widely variable. Participation that is effective through routinized institutional processes appears to be inversely related to contestatory participation that uses political mobilization to challenge the legitimacy of the priority setting process. No system has resolved the conceptual ambiguities that are implicit in the idea of public participation. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The paper draws on a unique collection of country case studies in participatory practice in prioritization, supplementing existing published sources. In showing that contestatory participation plays an important role in a sub-set of these countries it makes an important contribution to the field because it broadens the debate about public participation in priority setting beyond the use of minipublics and the observation of public representatives on decision-making bodies
Impact Factor: outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification?
A review of Garfield's journal impact factor and its specific implementation
as the Thomson Reuters Impact Factor reveals several weaknesses in this
commonly-used indicator of journal standing. Key limitations include the
mismatch between citing and cited documents, the deceptive display of three
decimals that belies the real precision, and the absence of confidence
intervals. These are minor issues that are easily amended and should be
corrected, but more substantive improvements are needed. There are indications
that the scientific community seeks and needs better certification of journal
procedures to improve the quality of published science. Comprehensive
certification of editorial and review procedures could help ensure adequate
procedures to detect duplicate and fraudulent submissions.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures, 6 table
On the relationship between individual and population health
The relationship between individual and population health is partially built on the broad dichotomization of medicine into clinical medicine and public health. Potential drawbacks of current views include seeing both individual and population health as absolute and independent concepts. I will argue that the relationship between individual and population health is largely relative and dynamic. Their interrelated dynamism derives from a causally defined life course perspective on health determination starting from an individualâs conception through growth, development and participation in the collective till death, all seen within the context of an adaptive society. Indeed, it will become clear that neither individual nor population health is identifiable or even definable without informative contextualization within the other. For instance, a personâs health cannot be seen in isolation but must be placed in the rich contextual web such as the socioeconomic circumstances and other health determinants of where they were conceived, born, bred, and how they shaped and were shaped by their environment and communities, especially given the prevailing population health exposures over their lifetime. We cannot discuss the âwhatâ and âhow muchâ of individual and population health until we know the cumulative trajectories of both, using appropriate causal language