Four normative perspectives on public health policy-making and their preferences for bodies of evidence.

Calls for evidence-informed public health policy-making often ignore that there are multiple, and often competing, bodies of potentially relevant evidence to which policy-makers have recourse in identifying policy priorities and taking decisions. In this paper, we illustrate how policy frames may favour the use of specific bodies of evidence. For the sixth Dutch Public Health Status and Foresight report (2014), possible future trends in population health and healthcare expenditure were used as a starting point for a deliberative dialogue with stakeholders to identify and formulate the most important societal challenges for the Dutch health system.

The Public Health Status and Foresight report 2014: Four normative perspectives on a healthier Netherlands in 2040.

Policy-oriented foresight reports aim to inform and advise decision-makers. In value-laden areas such as public health and healthcare, deliberative scenario methods are clearly needed. For the sixth Dutch Public Health Status and Forecasts-report (PHSF-2014), a new approach of co-creation was developed aiming to incorporate different societal norms and values in the description of possible future developments.

[Submucosal lipoma of the colon: abdominal cramps with rectal bleeding and weight loss].

An 81-year-old woman had abdominal cramps, rectal bleeding since 2 weeks and weight loss. Colonoscopy showed an ulcerating tumour of about 4 cm in the transverse colon. Pathological examination of biopsies taken during colonoscopy indicated moderately active chronic colitis.

A national burden of disease calculation: Dutch disability-adjusted life-years. Dutch Burden of Disease Group.

Objectives: This study estimated the burden of disease due to 48 major causes in the Netherlands in 1994 in disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), using national epidemiologic data and disability weights, and explored associated problems and uncertainties.

Methods: We combined data from Dutch vital statistics, registrations, and surveys with Dutch disability weights to calculate disease-specific health loss in DALYs, which are the sum of years of life lost (YLLs) and years lived with disability (YLDs) weighted for severity.

Results: YLLs were primarily lost by cardiovascular diseases and cancers, while YLDs were mostly lost by mental disorders and a range of chronic somatic disorders (such as chronic nonspecific lung disease and diabetes).

An aggregate public health indicator to represent the impact of multiple environmental exposures.

We present a framework to aggregate divergent health impacts associated with different types of environmental exposures, such as air pollution, residential noise, and large technologic risks. From the policy maker's point of view, there are at least three good reasons for this type of aggregation: comparative risk evaluation (for example, setting priorities), evaluation of the efficiency of environmental policies in terms of health gain, and characterizing health risk associated with geographical accumulation of multiple environmental exposures. The proposed impact measure integrates three important dimensions of public health: life expectancy, quality of life, and number of people affected.

Do antioxidants and polyunsaturated fatty acids have a combined association with coronary atherosclerosis?

To evaluate the antioxidant hypothesis with regard to atherosclerosis, we compared plasma selenium, serum alpha-tocopherol, serum polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), and the ratios of selenium and alpha-tocopherol to PUFAs in subjects with varying degrees of coronary atherosclerosis. Cases had more than 85% stenosis in at least one coronary vessel and controls had less than 50% stenosis in all three vessels. Plasma selenium was significantly lower in cases than controls (95.

Autoantibodies to brain specific proteins in human serum from normal and several pathological conditions.

Autoantibodies to three nervous tissue specific proteins [alpha Albumin (GFA, Eng et al., 1971), S100 (Moore et al., 1968) and MBP (Eylar et al.