Combining intervention diffusion with change in clinical practice and public policy is an ambitious agenda. The impressive effort in Hawaii can be instructive, highlighting questions for a science of treatment dissemination. Among these questions, some of the most important are the following: (a) Who should be targeted for change? (e.g., "downstream" clinicians in practice, "upstream" clinician...

Empirical research suggests that the cognitively able are politically more influential than the less able, by being more likely to vote and to assume leadership positions. This study asks whether this pattern matters for public policy by investigating what role a person's cognitive ability plays in determining his preferences for redistribution of income among citizens in society. To answer thi...

OBJECTIVE To assess the perception of diseases and the willingness to use public-tax revenue for their treatment among relevant stakeholders. DESIGN A population-based, cross-sectional mailed survey. SETTING Finland. PARTICIPANTS 3000 laypeople, 1500 doctors, 1500 nurses (randomly identified from the databases of the Finnish Population Register, the Finnish Medical Association and the Fin...

In recent years, modern economies have shifted away from being based on physical capital and towards being based on new knowledge (e.g., new ideas and inventions). Consequently, contemporary economic theorizing and key public policies have been based on the assumption that resources for generating knowledge (e.g., education, diversity of industries) are essential for regional economic vitality....

Despite widespread application of the public health approach to injury prevention, its facilitation of the translation of injury research to practice is limited. This paper describes a public policy approach to injury prevention, derived from Kingdon’s streams approach, which may circumvent the research-to-practice block, specifically for use by practitioners. The central premise of the propose...

by RIChARd KENdALL One of the most difficult obstacles to the adoption of social policies is the idea that governmental action is destined to fail. Because fallible individuals create and run governmental institutions, institutional action is bound to be fallible as well. Those who follow this logic tell us that, at best, public policy can ameliorate social problems. In their view, ills such as...