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BookWatch: Sound Choices

PHC RIS has had a long interest in research transfer and promoting the use of research findings in health policy. The field is growing in sophistication as insights accumulate. Recent developments include a shift from linear models of research production, dissemination and use and experimentation with ways to bridge the gap between researchers and policy makers, to an understanding of the complexities of policy making, the role of interests, ideologies and values and the importance of social networks in the spread of innovation. There are now calls for insights from the sociology of knowledge to be incorporated and a new field of social epistemology is developing with the task of determining the optimum social organisation for knowledge transfer.¹

I was thus very pleased to find this publication by the World Health Organization which acknowledges the social context in which knowledge travels and develops a conceptual framework and plan for capacity development at a national level for evidence informed health policy. Chapters address research priority setting, knowledge generation and dissemination, filtering and amplification and policy making processes. Key messages include the need to strengthen policy processes and structures to encourage use of evidence, to focus on the capacity development of organisations rather than individuals, and to learn more about filtering and amplification processes and how they impact on policy making.

In our current environment when encouraging the spread of innovation is high on the agenda of the new government it is a timely and useful publication and recommended reading for anybody with an interest in evidence based health policy.

Sound Choices is a 2007 publication of the World Health Organization and can be accessed at <http://www.who.int/alliance-hpsr/resources/Alliance_BR.pdf>.

Reference

World Health Organization. (2007). Sound choices: enhancing capacity for evidence-informed health policy. Eds A. Green and S. Bennett. Switzerland: WHO Press, World Health Organization.

1. Jacobson, N. 2007 Social Epistemology: Theory for the “Fourth Wave” of Knowledge Transfer and Exchange Research. Science Communication 2007; 29: 116