BACKGROUND Researchers and publishers have called for improved reporting of external validity items and for testing of existing tools designed to assess reporting of items relevant to external validity. Few tools are available and most of this work has been done within the field of health promotion. METHODS We tested a tool assessing reporting of external validity items which was developed by...

National ecosystem assessments form an essential knowledge base for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services. We analyze eight European (sub-)national ecosystem assessments (Portugal, United Kingdom, Spain, Norway, Flanders, Netherlands, Finland, and Germany) and compare their objectives, political context, methods, and operationalization. We observed remarkable differences in breadth o...

Personal exposure is sensitive to the personal features and behavior of the individual, and including interpersonal variability will improve the health and quality of life evaluations. Participatory sensing assesses the spatial and temporal variability of environmental indicators and is used to quantify this interpersonal variability. Transferring the participatory sensing information to a spec...

BACKGROUND The importance of health policy and systems research and analysis (HPSR+A) has been increasingly recognised, but it is still unclear how most effectively to strengthen the capacity of the different organisations involved in this field. Universities are particularly crucial but the expansive literature on capacity development has little to offer the unique needs of HPSR+A activity wit...

Our research programme on fee exemption policies in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger involved sensitive topics with strong ideological and political connotations for the decision-makers, for health-workers, and for users. Thus we were confronted with reluctance, criticism, pressures and accusations. Our frank description of the shortcomings of these policies, based on rigorous research, and never p...

BACKGROUND Despite a wealth of research and policy initiatives, progress in tackling the UK's health inequalities has been limited. This article explores whether there appears to be consensus among researchers about the kinds of policies likely to reduce health inequalities. METHODS Ninety-nine proposals for addressing health inequalities were identified from multiple sources. Forty-one resea...

Evaluability assessment, also commonly known as exploratory evaluation, has assisted the field of public health to improve programs and to develop a pragmatic, practice-based research agenda. Evaluability assessment was originally developed as a low-cost pre-evaluation activity to prepare better for conventional evaluations of programs, practices, and some policies. For public health programs, ...

Over the last century there has been a shift from conceptualizing disability as a challenge to law and order, to viewing disability as a medical and/or economic deficit and then as a sociopolitical issue. In Canada, these changing conceptualizations of disability have been reflected in the development of disability policies, which form part of general Canadian social policies. Each model of dis...

The number of reported cases of tuberculosis (TB) in foreign-born persons in the United States during 1995 was 8,042, 36% of the national total. The overseas screening of immigrants and refugee visa applicants, which relies on a chest radiograph and smear microscopy, is designed to identify future U.S. residents who have active TB or who are at high risk for TB. In this commentary, we summarize...

Although a large body of international literature has found syringe exchange programmes (SEPs) to be associated with reduced incidence of blood borne pathogens among injection drug users, recent studies have fuelled controversy surrounding SEP effectiveness. Existing studies are observational in nature and have seldom considered ecologic aspects affecting SEP functioning and evaluation. The aut...