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Background: In light of worrying public health developments such as declining life expectancy gains and increasing health inequalities, there is a heightened interest in the relationship between politics and health. This scoping review explores the possible welfare policy consequences of populist radical right (PRR) parties in Europe and the implications for population health. The aim is to map the available empirical evidence regarding the influence of PRR parties on welfare policy reforms and to understand how this relationship is mediated by political system characteristics in different countries. Methods and Analysis: A scoping review of peer-reviewed empirical literature addressing the relationship between PRR parties, political systems and welfare policy in Europe was performed using the methodology by the Joanna Briggs Institute. Data was charted on main study characteristics, concepts and relevant results, after which a qualitative content analysis was performed. The data was categorised according to the political system characteristics: constitution, political economy, interest representation and partisanship. Five expert interviews were conducted for validation purposes. Early evidence from 15 peer-reviewed articles suggests that exclusionary welfare chauvinistic positions of PRR parties are likely to have negative effects on the access to welfare provisions and health of vulnerable population groups. Differences in implementation of welfare chauvinistic policy reforms are partly explained by mediation of the constitutional order (judicial institutions at national and European Union [EU] level), political economy (healthcare system funding and European single market) and partisanship (vote-seeking strategies by PRR and mainstream parties). No clear evidence was found regarding the influence of interest representation on welfare chauvinistic policies. Discussion: While early evidence suggests that the welfare chauvinistic ideology of PRR parties is harmful for public health, the possible mediating role of political system characteristics on PRR welfare policy influence offers risk and protective factors explaining why the PRR ideology plays out differently across Europe.

Background Forty-three out of 53 of the WHO European Member States have set up political and institutional mechanisms to implement the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This includes governance and institutional mechanisms, engaging stakeholders, identifying targets and indicators, setting governmental and sectoral priorities for action and reporting progress regularly. Still, growing evidence suggests that there is room for advancing implementation of some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets at a higher pace in the WHO European Region. This article proposes the E4A approach to support WHO European Member States in their efforts to achieve the health-related SDG targets. Methods The E4A approach was developed through a 2-year, multi-stage process, starting with the endorsement of the SDG Roadmap by all WHO European Member States in 2017. This approach resulted from a mix of qualitative methods: a semi-structured desk review of existing committal documents and tools; in-country policy dialogs, interviews and reports; joint UN missions and discussion among multi-lateral organizations; consultation with an advisory group of academics and health policy experts across countries. Results The E—engage—functions as the driver and pace-maker; the 4 As—assess, align, accelerate and account—serve as building blocks composed of policies, processes, activities and interventions operating in continuous and synchronized action. Each of the building blocks is an essential part of the approach that can be applied across geographic and institutional levels. Conclusion While the E4A approach is being finalized, this article aims to generate debate and input to further refine and test this approach from a public health and user perspective.

Background Do political parties matter to health? Do they affect population health either directly or through welfare states’ social policies and the eligibility, affordability and quality of health systems? And if they do, how? These are crucial questions if we are to understand health politics or shape public health policy, particularly given the changing landscape of political parties, party dominance in the executive and the mediating influence of the legislature. Methods Using a systematic approach, this review examines 107 peer-reviewed articles and books published after 1978 focusing on high-income countries asking the overarching question: Do political parties matter to health and the welfare state? Results The literature relating parties to health directly was surprisingly thin, thus, the welfare state was used as a ‘proxy’ variable. An overwhelming majority of the literature sample suggests that Left parties are inclined to expand the welfare state without cutting benefits, while the Right does not expand and tends to reduce benefits. There was an inflection in the 1980s when Left parties shifted from expansion to maintaining the status quo. Conclusion Considering current health trends in the form of measles outbreaks, the ‘Deaths of Despair’, the rise of previous eradicated infectious diseases and the declining health expectancy rates in some Western countries as well as the rise of Populist Radical Right parties in office we question the current partisanship thesis that political parties matter less and less.

The decision-making is always a complex process that should be based on best available scientific evidence and experts judgments. COVID-19 pandemic has added more complexity to this process, demanding a fluid, accurate and rapid respond from public health experts and science. This panellist together with the rest of speakers will help us to revise this process to identify possible gaps and space of future improvement.

Public health is about policy, power, and the public and as such might be thought necessarily political. That does not mean, however, that the place of political analysis and engagement in public health is uncontroversial, and there have been longstanding arguments that to discuss politics sullies the scientific nature of public health. This article, introducing a special issue on political science in public health, argues that rigorous use of middle-range theory can inform our analysis of public health problems and avoid the risks of politicization, excessive abstraction or excessive concreteness. It summarizes key political science concepts discussed in the papers: epistemic communities, interest groups, advocacy coalitions, political parties, institutions, legalism, discourse and the political economy of labour. We hope that the series will provide the public health community with some tools and methods for how to integrate public health knowledge into the sphere of decision making in an appropriate way.

Democratic institutions and state-society relations shape governance arrangements and expectations between public and private stakeholders about public health impact. We illustrate this with a comparison between the English Public Health Responsibility Deal (RD) and the Dutch ‘All About Health…’ (AaH) programme. As manifestations of a Whole-of-Society approach, in which governments, civil society and business take responsibility for the co-production of economic utility and good health, these programmes are two recent collaborative platforms based on voluntary agreements to improve public health. Using a ‘most similar cases’ design, we conducted a comparative secondary analysis of data from the evaluations of the two programmes. The underlying rationale of both programmes was that voluntary agreements would be better suited than regulation to encourage business and civil society to take more responsibility for improving health. Differences between the two included: expectations of an enforcing versus facilitative role for government; hierarchical versus horizontal coordination; big business versus civil society participants; top-down versus bottom-up formulation of voluntary pledges and progress monitoring for accountability versus for learning and adaptation. Despite the attempt in both programmes to base voluntary commitments on trust, the English ‘shadow of hierarchy’ and adversarial state-society relationships conditioned non-governmental parties to see the pledges as controlling, quasi-contractual agreements that were only partially lived up to. The Dutch consensual political tradition enabled a civil society-based understanding and gradual acceptance of the pledges as the internalization by partner organizations of public health values within their operations. We conclude that there are institutional limitations to the implementation of generic trust-building and learning-based models of change ‘Whole-of-Society’ approaches.

Understanding of public health adaptation (PHA) to climate change and implementation is limited. This study therefore focuses on one specific PHA issue: adaptation to the oak processionary moth (OPM). The aim is to examine the development of OPM adaptation in order to offer a problem description of the complexities involved in OPM adaptation. In this explorative case study, we investigate adaptation strategies based on semi-structured interviews with 26 actors involved in OPM adaptation in The Netherlands. The results indicate that the context of OPM adaptation is relatively complex, given the involvement of many interdependent actors. OPM adaptation was developed with limited knowledge and strategies were based on ad hoc approaches in which there was ambiguity about tasks and expertise. In addition, different actors have different perceptions and values concerning health, sustainability, risks and responsibilities influencing decision-making processes, while also posing a challenge to collaboration and the development of a coordinated approach. The generation of knowledge and its translation into practical strategies calls for interdisciplinary cooperation in knowledge development. PHA adaptation involves more than technical and organisational solutions alone. It also entails the development of a shared problem perception and solution space in which citizens are also engaged.

Early evidence suggests that populist radical right (PRR) parties and their exclusionary policy agenda could be a threat to population health. In the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) is the main PRR party. It has been closely involved in a national coalition government (2010–2012) under a Tolerance Agreement, in which the PVV supported the minority government without formally being part of it. The aim of this case study is to analyse the standpoints and influence of the PVV – and to a smaller extent the newer Forum for Democracy (FvD) – on health policy in the areas of elderly care, curative care, public health, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The PVV’s agenda on healthcare is welfare chauvinistic, favouring increased government spending (primarily for older adults) combined with the exclusion of certain immigrant groups. During its time supporting a centre-right coalition, the PVV faced a trade-off between pursuing its electoral agenda and maintaining its position in office. The party maintained a strong focus on immigration and elderly care but conformed to the coalition at the expense of its welfare chauvinistic healthcare agenda. This resulted in liberal chauvinistic health policy, in favour of cutting welfare spending in general, with a particular focus on minorities.

This study explored associations between perceived neighborhood walkability and neighborhood-based physical activity (NB-PA) and assessed possible moderation effects of the amount of time spent in the home neighborhood and individual characteristics (i.e., educational level and health-related problems). In 2016 to 2017, 509 Dutch adults, living in the South Limburg area, were included. Context-specific PA levels were measured using the Actigraph GT3X+ accelerometer and the Qstarz BTQ1000XT GPS-logger. Perceived neighborhood walkability, level of education, work status, and health-related quality of life were measured with validated self-report instruments. Results showed that individuals with a lower level of education or health-related problems spent more time in the home neighborhood. The perceived neighborhood walkability only affected NB-PA for individuals spending a relatively large amount of time in their home neighborhood. PA-facilitating features in the home neighborhood, for example, aesthetics, were only associated with more NB-PA for individuals without health-related problems or with a higher level of education.

Health initiatives are increasingly situated outside the institutionalised public health sector. The intersectoral character of societal initiatives, along with indirect relationships between initiatives and health, makes making projections of reach, impact and goal achievement complex. This scoping review of the peer-reviewed literature searches for appropriate methods to conduct quantitative health impact assessment for such initiatives. Database searches were done in PubMed and Web of Science, as well as a reference list search. Studies were then selected in a systematic manner. The review includes 64 studies. Most studies made estimates using simulation methods, notably with Monte Carlo, Markov and system dynamics modelling. Inputs for the models such as transition probabilities and price elasticities were taken from census, register and survey data, evidence from previous (scientific) studies and sometimes outcomes from stakeholder participation. Of different health outcome measures, the number of deaths was most frequently used, followed by QALYs and DALYs and life years. Health effect distribution is frequently mentioned, but not often estimated. Scientific methodological publications on HIAs focusing on civil society initiatives are relatively sparse, indicating possibilities for further methodological advancement. Estimating health effect distributions and incorporating stakeholder participation could make meaningful additions to standard practice.

The current article presents an in-depth case study as part of a health impact assessment (HIA) on the effects of a major integrative infrastructural urban redesign project in Maastricht on physical activity and health; the Green Carpet project. In this 1.2 billion euro reconstruction project, a highway that crossed several neighborhoods was tunnelled and the space on top of this tunnel was redesigned and prioritized for pedestrians and cyclists, which is further elaborated on in paragraph 2. The aim of this paper is to explore and describe the role of context in explaining the developments within the integrated urban reconstruction project and its presumed health effects over time, and to draw implications for evaluation theory and methodology such as spatial or urban health impact assessment.

The primary goal of this special issue is to showcase novel, theory-driven, creative, and rigorous contributions to our understanding of the existence and development of a culture of prevention and readiness to prevent. The term "culture of prevention" is neither a set of practical guidelines nor a leading theory. Instead, it is a multidimensional term representing the general orientation and readiness of a group of people (be it a family, community, school, organization, nation, etc.) to deal with problems using a preventive, rather than a reactive, approach. The COVID-19 pandemic creates an opportunity for taking stock of the worldwide progress in creating a "culture of prevention." This special issue aims to stimulate this discourse by presenting six studies and three commentaries from international scholars focused on themes and approaches for creating a culture of prevention.

Researchers are increasingly expected to deliver “socially robust knowledge” that is not only scientifically reliable but also takes into account demands from societal actors. This article focuses on an empirical example where these additional criteria are explicitly organized into research settings. We investigate how the multiple “accountabilities” are managed in such “responsive research settings.” This article provides an empirical account of such an organizational format: the Dutch Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health. We present a cross-case analysis of four collaborative research projects conducted within this context. We build on (and extend) Miller’s notion of “hybrid management.” The article shows that the extended concept of hybrid management is useful to study the different accountabilities encountered in such settings. We analyze how the collaboration developed and which conflicts or dilemmas arose. We then focus on the different hybrid management strategies used in the collaboration. The empirical material shows how the different aspects of hybrid management feature in various configurations in the four projects. We highlight that hybrid management strategies may be used by different groups or at different moments, may reinforce or contradict each other, and may be more or less effective at different points in time.

The use of evidence in health promotion has become the gold standard, and obliges rethinking how to increase the (often limited) use of evidence in public health policy. Recently calls have been made to reconceptualise science policy relations as dynamic, interactive and coconstructive practices. Building on a qualitative investigation of an information tool for the Dutch government, the authors show how the nature of evidence is closely linked to its usefulness for policy, and how a specific infrastructural organisation of science-policy interactions contributes to an effective participation and interaction between both scientists and policy makers and the translation of research findings.