Minority Health and Health Equity Archive

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21769

Welcome to the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive (MHHEA), an electronic archive for digital resource materials in the fields of minority health and health disparities research and policy. It is offered as a no-charge resource to the public, academic scholars and health science researchers interested in the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.

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Author: search.filters.author.Graham, HilarySubject: search.filters.subject.health inequalities

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    Evidence for public health policy on inequalities: 2: Assembling the evidence jigsaw
    (2004) Whitehead, Margaret; Petticrew, Mark; Graham, Hilary; Macintyre, Sally J; Bambra, Clare; Egan, Matt
    Study objective: To garner research leaders’ perceptions and experiences of the types of evidence that influence policy on health inequalities, and their reflections on how the flow of such research evidence could be increased. Design, setting, and participants: Qualitative two day residential workshop with senior research leaders, most of whom were currently involved in evaluations of the health effects of major policies. In four in depth sessions, facilitated by the authors in turn, focused questions were presented to participants to reveal their views and experiences concerning evidence synthesis for policy on inequalities. These were analysed thematically. Main results: Five types of evidence for policy on health inequalities were felt to be particularly persuasive with policymakers: observational evidence showing the existing of a problem; narrative accounts of the impacts of policies from the household perspective; controlled evaluations; natural policy experiments; and historical evidence. Methods of improving the availability and use of these sources of information were put forward. Conclusions: This paper and its companion have considered the current evidence base for policies to reduce health inequalities, and how this could be improved. There is striking congruence between the views of the researchers in this study and policy advisers in paper 1, suggesting that a common understanding may be emerging. The findings suggest significant potential for rapid progress to be made in developing both evidence based policy, and policy relevant evidence to tackle inequalities in health.
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    Evidence for public health policy on inequalities: 1:The reality according to policymakers
    (2004) Petticrew, Mark; Whitehead, Margaret; Macintyre, Sally J; Graham, Hilary; Egan, Matt
    Objective: To explore with UK and international policy advisors how research evidence influences public health policy making, and how its relevance and utility could be improved, with specific reference to the evidence on the production and reduction of health inequalities. Design, setting, and participants: Qualitative residential workshop involving senior policy advisors with a substantive role in policy development across a range of sectors (mainly public health, but also including education, social welfare, and health services). In four in depth sessions, facilitated by the authors, focused questions were presented to participants. Their responses were then analysed thematically to identify key themes, relating to the availability and utility of existing evidence on health inequalities. Main results: The lack of an equity dimension in much aetiological and evaluative research was highlighted by participants. Much public health research was also felt to have weak underlying theoretical underpinnings. As well as evaluations of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of policy and other interventions, they identified a need for predictive research, and for methodological research to further develop methods for assessing the impact on health of clusters of interventions. Conclusions: This study reinforces the view that there is a lack of information on the effectiveness and costeffectiveness of policies, and it uncovered additional gaps in the health inequalities evidence base. A companion paper discusses researchers’ views of how the production of more relevant public health evidence can be stimulated.