The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic allowed for exceptional decision-making power to be placed in the hands of public health departments. Data and information were widely disseminated in the media and on websites. While the improvement of pandemic management is still a learning curve, the ecosystem perspective - that is, the interconnection of academic health research systems and decision-making spaces - has received little attention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHealth Res Policy Syst
September 2023
Background: There is growing interest from health researchers in the governance of Health in All Policies (HiAP). Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has re-ignited managers' interest in HiAP governance and in health prevention activities that involve actors from outside health ministries. Since the dynamics of these multi-actor, multi-sectoral policies are complex, the use of systems theory is a promising avenue toward understanding and improving HiAP governance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Health research has scientific, social and political impacts. To achieve such impacts, several institutions need to participate; however, health research funding institutions are seldom nominated in the literature as essential players. The attention they have received has so far focused mainly on their role in knowledge translation, informing policy-making and the need to organise health research systems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSetting: We investigate the capacities of an organization responsible for bridging top-down instructions emanating from a law on public health with the bottom-up realities of health service providers working on population-based health. This article traces the implementation of this law, which requires service-provider organizations to base their actions (planning, prevention, and curative activities) upon the expressed and non-expressed needs of the local population. We investigate a case in the province of Québec that took place over more than 10 years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Implementing research findings into healthcare policy is an enduring challenge made even more difficult when policies must be developed and implemented with the help and support of multiple ideas, agendas and actors taking part in determinants of health. Only looking at mechanisms to feed policy-makers with evidence or to interest researchers in the policy process will simply bring partial clues; implementing evidence-based policy also requires organisations to lead and to partner in the production and intake of scientific evidence from academics and practical evidence from one another.
Main Body: This Commentary argues for the need to better understand the capacities required by organisations to foster evidence-based policy in a dispersed environment.
La pertinence de l'évaluation d'impact sur la santé (ÉIS) pour promouvoir le développement de politiques publiques favorables à la santé au sein des municipalités est de plus en plus reconnue. L'appréciation des effets d'une démarche d'ÉIS sur les processus décisionnels d'acteurs municipaux peut toutefois être difficile en raison de la multitude d'influences sociales, économiques, géographiques et personnelles auxquels ils sont soumis. Dans un tel contexte, l'approche évaluative de l'analyse de contribution (AC) s'avère particulièrement intéressante puisqu'elle permet de documenter les facteurs menant à l'efficacité d'une intervention en tenant compte des éléments du contexte.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In Quebec (Canada), the Monteregie Regional Public Health Department has chosen to use health impact assessment (HIA) to support municipalities through a knowledge exchange and collaborative process in order to positively influence decision-making regarding local policies and projects. The value of HIA is becoming increasingly recognized by municipalities interested in planning and managing their cities with an eco-systemic perspective. However, the knowledge and tools which support the use of the HIA at regional and local levels are still missing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Funding agencies constitute one essential pillar for policy makers, researchers and health service delivery institutions. Such agencies are increasingly providing support for science implementation. In this paper, we investigate health research funding agencies and how they support the integration of science into policy, and of science into practice, and vice versa.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe evaluation of interventions is becoming increasing common and now often seeks to involve managers in the process. Such practical participatory evaluation (PPE) aims to increase the use of evaluation results through the participation of stakeholders. This study focuses on the propensity of health managers for PPE, as measured through the components of learning, working in groups, use of judgment and use of systematic methods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOne way to increase the use of evaluation results is practical participatory evaluation (PPE), which enables non-evaluator participants to join the evaluation process in a participatory mode. We examined the propensity for PPE of health professionals by focusing on four components: learning, working in groups, using judgment and using systematic methods. We interviewed the professionals at a Haitian health institution to determine their positioning on a scale of propensity (low, medium and high) for the four components.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To compare the conceptualization of performance underlying different accreditation manuals.
Data Sources: Accreditation manuals were selected from the 2003 WHO report titled 'Quality and Accreditation in Healthcare Services'. We used manuals from WHO-listed countries that most influenced the standards: Canada, France, the USA and Australia.
Cells with an endothelial phenotype can be cultured from peripheral blood. These cells include cells of a monocytic origin with endothelial features (culture-modified mononuclear cells, CMMCs) and, at later time points, blood outgrowth endothelial cells (BOECs). Both are promising candidates for systemic cell-based cardiovascular therapies and each may have unique capabilities.
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