43 research outputs found
Managing the information gap through Health Impact Assessment: Selection, learning and application
Session 5: Knowledge societ
The Politics of Healthy Policies: Redesigning health impact assessment to integrate health in public policy
Public health issues, such as obesity, lung disease
from air pollution or mental health complaints from living in an
unsafe neighbourhood, are complex, intractable policy problems. The
causes are dispersed at the individual and the collective level among
different societal sectors. One strategy to integrate health in other
sectors’ policies for developing effective and cooperative policy
solutions is to provide evidence in a Health Impact Assessment (HIA)
from proposed policies and project plans. In 15 years of practising
HIA, policymakers and academics nevertheless express concern about
its effectiveness.
In The Politics of Healthy Policies a conceptual and empirical
analysis is presented of the role of HIA in policy development. From
a governance perspective the author identifies different purposes of
HIA for indicating societal problems and democratic deficits. These
suggest that a technical design of HIA to assess causes and effects
insufficiently addresses the political and normative issues of
collaborative policymaking without institutional requirements or
incentives. Four case studies are analysed of Dutch HIA practices at
the national and local policy level, including a game simulation of
health advocacy without HIA. The outcomes suggest that a re-
orientation on HIA is necessary in order to mobilise other sectors to
prevent or mitigate public health problems.
The author proposes an interaction-oriented, reflective design and a
new definition of HIA. The book is especially relevant to HIA
practitioners and health policymakers at different governmental
levels. Many of the implications are highly relevant to other forms
of impact assessment as well
Gezondheidseffectschatting voor Gezond Beleid
Gezondheidseffectschatting is teamsport.
Spelers met gezondheidskundige en bestuurlijke functies en rollen leveren een gezamenlijke
inspanning binnen een kader van spelregels, die door alle spelers worden erkend. De spelregels
voor een GES bestaan uit gezondheidskundige regels, zoals validiteit en betrouwbaarheid van de
effectschatting; en bestuurlijke regels, zoals haalbaarheid, nut, en aanvaardbaarheid van de
beleidsalternatieven die uit de effectschatting worden afgeleid. Omdat de beleidsspelregels
afhankelijk zijn van de specifieke context, worden die spelregels tijdens een GES afgesproken
met betrokkenen. Daarom is GES een teamsport op ‘projectbasis’
Verschuivende verhoudingen
Overgewicht is in relatief korte tijd veranderd van een individueel gezondheidsprobleem
in een volksgezondheidsprobleem. Dit is gepaard gegaan met een groeiende roep om
overheidsbemoeienis in de vorm van wet- en regelgeving. Maar wat vermag de overheid?
In dit essay onderwerpen we de roep om overheidsingrijpen aan een kritische reflectie.
Hoewel de overheid een grondwettelijke verantwoordelijkheid heeft voor de publieke
gezondheid, leert de geschiedenis van andere leefstijlgerelateerde problemen ons dat de
overheid zich in een paradoxale situatie bevindt. Enerzijds kan ze in instrumentele zin
veel doen – ze beschikt immers over een uitgebreide gereedschapskist met juridische en
economische beleidsinstrumenten. Anderzijds wordt de overheid vaak in haar
handelingsruimte beperkt doordat dat beleidsinstrumentarium maatschappelijk omstreden
is
A Scoping Review of Populist Radical Right Parties' Influence on Welfare Policy and its Implications for Population Health in Europe.
BACKGROUND: In light of worrying public health developments such as declining life expectancy gains and increasing health inequalities, there is a heightened interest in the relationship between politics and health. This scoping review explores the possible welfare policy consequences of populist radical right (PRR) parties in Europe and the implications for population health. The aim is to map the available empirical evidence regarding the influence of PRR parties on welfare policy reforms and to understand how this relationship is mediated by political system characteristics in different countries. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: A scoping review of peer-reviewed empirical literature addressing the relationship between PRR parties, political systems and welfare policy in Europe was performed using the methodology by the Joanna Briggs Institute. Data was charted on main study characteristics, concepts and relevant results, after which a qualitative content analysis was performed. The data was categorised according to the political system characteristics: constitution, political economy, interest representation and partisanship. Five expert interviews were conducted for validation purposes. Early evidence from 15 peer-reviewed articles suggests that exclusionary welfare chauvinistic positions of PRR parties are likely to have negative effects on the access to welfare provisions and health of vulnerable population groups. Differences in implementation of welfare chauvinistic policy reforms are partly explained by mediation of the constitutional order (judicial institutions at national and European Union [EU] level), political economy (healthcare system funding and European single market) and partisanship (vote-seeking strategies by PRR and mainstream parties). No clear evidence was found regarding the influence of interest representation on welfare chauvinistic policies. DISCUSSION: While early evidence suggests that the welfare chauvinistic ideology of PRR parties is harmful for public health, the possible mediating role of political system characteristics on PRR welfare policy influence offers risk and protective factors explaining why the PRR ideology plays out differently across Europe
Bridging the Gap Between Public Health and Political Science to Study the Populist Radical Right in its Multiple Manifestations: A Response to Recent Commentaries.
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Strategies for public health adaptation to climate change in practice: social learning in the processionary Moth Knowledge Platform
Social learning theory can support understanding of how a group of diverse actors addresses complex challenges related to public health adaptation. This study focuses on one specific issue of public health adaptation: oak processionary moth (OPM) adaptation. With a social learning framework, we examined how public health adaption strategies gradually develop and are adjusted on the basis of new knowledge and experiences. For this qualitative case study, data were collected through 27 meetings of the Processionary Moth Knowledge Platform in the Netherlands and six additional interviews. Results indicate that relations between stakeholders, including experts played a major role in the learning process, facilitating the development and implementation of OPM adaptation and connecting local challenges to national adaptation strategies. Uncertainties regarding knowledge and organization were recurrent topics of discussion, highlighting the iterative and adaptive nature of public health adaptation. The study emphasizes the importance of building relationships among stakeholders and small steps in the learning process that can lead to the creation of new strategies and, if successful, the prevention of negative health impacts
Political analysis in public health: middle-range concepts to make sense of the politics of health
Public health is about policy, power, and the public and as such might be thought necessarily political. That does not mean, however, that the place of political analysis and engagement in public health is uncontroversial, and there have been longstanding arguments that to discuss politics sullies the scientific nature of public health. This article, introducing a special issue on political science in public health, argues that rigorous use of middle-range theory can inform our analysis of public health problems and avoid the risks of politicization, excessive abstraction or excessive concreteness. It summarizes key political science concepts discussed in the papers: epistemic communities, interest groups, advocacy coalitions, political parties, institutions, legalism, discourse and the political economy of labour. We hope that the series will provide the public health community with some tools and methods for how to integrate public health knowledge into the sphere of decision making in an appropriate way