From public health science to prevention policy: placing science in its social and political contexts.

How Political Science Can Contribute to Public Health: A Response to Gagnon and Colleagues

Why and How Political Science Can Contribute to Public Health? Proposals for Collaborative Research Avenues

Written by a group of political science researchers, this commentary focuses on the contributions of political science to public health and proposes research avenues to increase those contributions. Despite progress, the links between researchers from these two fields develop only slowly. Divergences between the approach of political science to public policy and the expectations that public hea...

SOCIAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY What is Socially Relevant Science?

Interest in the effect on society of scientific discoveries can be traced back to the beginnings of the modern sciences. It is plain to see that for reasons of legitimizing science alone, this question was not only of interest to the early scientists. Affirmative answers to the question of the practical virtues of science helped the first generation of scientists—and of course present-day scien...

Complexity Theory in Political Science and Public Policy

Advocates of complexity theory describe it as a new scientific paradigm. Complexity theory identifies instability and disorder in politics and policy making, and links them to the behaviour of complex systems. It suggests that we shift our analysis from individual parts of a political system to the system as a whole; as a network of elements that interact and combine to produce systemic behavio...

Epidemiologic science and public health policy.

Our alleged views on science and policy [l] differ from our actual views [2]. We do not believe that epidemiologists “simply should not be involved in policy making” [ll. To the contrary, we uphold the “rights and responsibilities of scientists to participate, like any concerned citizens, in the politica1 process that determines policy” [2]. The science of epidemiology is firmly ensconsed withi...