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

Managing the information gap through Health Impact Assessment: Selection, learning and application

Session 5: Knowledge societ

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

De Volksgezondheid Toekomst Verkenning als infrastructuur voor evidence-based gezondheidsbeleid

__Kernpunten:__ - Een uitsluitend rationeel perspectief op de relatie tussen kennis en beleid kan leiden tot een verdere formalisering van deze relatie, met negatieve consequenties voor de waarde van wetenschappel

Werk als medicijn. Publiek-private preventie van psychische klachten via de werkplek

Psychosociale klachten zijn een groot en hardnekkig volksge-zondheidsprobleem. Hoewel in het afgelopen decennium hier-voor veel preventieve activiteiten zijn ontwikkeld, blijft één factor onderbelicht: de beschermende rol van arbeid bij psy-chosociale gezondheid

Coordination of research, policy and practice: A case study of collaboration in the field of public health

Public health policies and services are increasingly scrutinized for their quality and accountability and 'evidence-based' ways of working are becoming more important in most public sector activities. In the Netherlands this led to the development of academic collaborative centers (ACCs) for public health: formal, long-term collaborations between municipal health services, university departments and other stakeholders. In this paper we argue that discussing issues of research uptake or research utilization in terms of 'gaps' that need to be 'bridged' is unproductive when analyzing structural collaborations or partnerships between researchers, policy-makers and practitioners. Within collaborative settings such as the ACCs, the clear distinction between what counts as 'science' and what counts as 'policy' is only one side of the story. We use the notions of 'boundary organization' and 'front stage and back stage settings' to analyze a case study of a collaborative project conducted within one of the ACCs

Dutch Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health: development through time – issues, dil

While much research utilisation literature shows an increasing emphasis on the added value of structural partnerships, which should facilitate prolonged interactions between researchers, policy makers and professionals, the question of how such collaborative structures develop over time and what consequences that has in terms of collaboration is usually neglected. This paper offers an empirical analysis of a Dutch partnership format developed over a period of four years, based on two interview rounds conducted between 2007 and 2010, supplemented with document analysis and a focus group. It focuses on changing challenges and dilemmas in different development stages and outlines which strategies are used

Hybrid Management Configurations in Joint Research

__Abstract__ Researchers are increasingly expected to deliver ‘‘socially robust knowledge’’ that is not only scientifically reliable but also takes into account demands from societal actors. This article focuses on an empirical example where these additional criteria are explicitly organized into research settings. We investigate how the multiple ‘‘accountabilities’’ are managed in such ‘‘responsive research settings.’’ This article provides an empirical account of such an organizational format: the Dutch Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health. We present a cross-case analysis of four collaborative research projects conducted within this context. We build on (and extend) Miller’s notion of ‘‘hybrid management.’’ The article shows that the extended concept of hybrid management is useful to study the different accountabilities encountered in such settings. We analyze how the collaboration developed and which conflicts or dilemmas arose. We then focus on the different hybrid management strategies used in the collaboration. The empirical material shows how the different aspects of hybrid management feature in various configurations in the four projects. We highlight that hybrid management strategies may be used by different groups or at different moments, may reinforce or contradict each other, and may be more or less effective at different points in time