prospective studies of the potential health consequences of trade and investment treaties, such as the trans-pacific partnership, are critical. these studies can make visible to trade policy-makers the potential negative impacts associated to such treaties and can influence the outcomes of such negotiations. however, few researchers have examined retrospectively the consequences of trade agreem...

Background Facilitation of service user participation in the co-production of mental healthcare planning and service delivery is an integral component of contemporary mental health policy and clinical guidelines. However, many service users continue to experience exclusion from the planning of their care. This review synthesizes qualitative research about participation in mental healthcare and ...

There is a growing global market in healthcare and patients. And while there is a small body of evidence emerging around this phenomenon commonly known as medical tourism there remain significant unanswered policy and research questions which need to be addressed. We outline some of the key issues set against the six key disciplinary preoccupations of the journal: epidemiology, health economics...

The objective of this work is to describe the experience of the Uganda Public Health School Without Walls (PHSWOW) in training public health professionals at post-graduate level to offer leadership in planning, delivery of health services and research within a decentralized health system. As one of the constituents of the Makerere University College of Health Sciences, the Uganda PHSWOW has the...

Comparative effectiveness research (CER) has received substantial attention as a potential approach for improving health outcomes while lowering costs of care, and for improving the relevance and quality of clinical and health services research. The Institute of Medicine defines CER as 'the conduct and synthesis of systematic research comparing different interventions and strategies to prevent,...

BACKGROUND Evidence-based decision-making is an important foundation for health policy and service planning decisions, yet there remain challenges in ensuring that the many forms of available evidence are considered when decisions are being made. Mobilising knowledge for policy and practice is an emergent process, and one that is highly relational, often messy and profoundly context dependent. ...

Taking Culture Seriously in Community Mental Health is an Ontariobased community based participatory action research project devoted to developing, pilot testing, and evaluating mental health service models grounded in the concept of “cultural empowerment.” In order to stimulate knowledge mobilization efforts among partners, to clarify expectations held by members of the diverse groups particip...

BACKGROUND Deliberative dialogues have recently captured attention in the public health policy arena because they have the potential to address several key factors that influence the use of research evidence in policymaking. We conducted an evaluation of three deliberative dialogues convened in Canada by the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy in order to learn more about de...