Evidence based public health: A review of the experience of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) of developing public health guidance in England.

This paper describes the application of the principles of evidence based medicine to public health. It recounts the experience of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in England (NICE) which acquired a remit to develop public health guidance in 2005. Some of the history of the origins of the evidence based approach is described in the writings of Cochrane and others, and the way that this came to be a critical part of the NICE approach to developing clinical cost effectiveness is outlined.