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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.

Public health research aims to change the world, or at least contribute to the development of healthier and more equitable societies. However, the availability of health information does not inherently lead to its increased use in policy and decision-making. Significant gap remains between the knowledge of public health researchers and the actions taken by decision-makers. Various tools and mechanisms can help to increase the use of scientific evidence in policy development by making policymakers appreciate, understand and incorporate such scientific information into policy decisions. As part of this process, it is crucial that researchers and public health practitioners acquire the ability to translate their knowledge and become skilled on communicating the evidence effectively. To this aim, we will present firstly a WHO approach for that on the basis of EVIPNet Europe. Member countries have benefited of EVIPNet Europe’s capacity building efforts, its training workshops, coaching and mentoring schemes, leading to increased knowledge and skills in view of identifying, accessing, appraising, synthesizing and communicating the best available evidence. The presentation will focus on the ways to trigger tangible changes at policy and legislative levels. The second presentation will give more specific information about the process of real-life applications. Main question will be “How to advocate scientific evidence to decision-makers in the frame of evidence-informed policy-making?”. The presentation will help the participants to analyze to whom they are targeting, what their interests are and how to communicate scientific information to a decision-maker effectively. Last but not least, common challenges of evidence-informed policy-making process in health care and ways to tackle them will be presented. By doing so, special attention will be paid to the methodologies for joint fact-finding, responsive evaluation and citizen science. The workshop will engage participants interactively and leave time for answering their questions at the end. Key messages Public health professionals can influence health policies, if they learn strategies in communicating scientific evidence to decision-makers effectively. Providing correct skills to researchers when communicating about and advocating for the scientific evidence with policymakers will enhance the impact of evidence on policy making.

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.

While much research utilisation literature shows an increasing emphasis on the added value of structural partnerships, which should facilitate prolonged interactions between researchers, policy makers and professionals, the question of how such collaborative structures develop over time and what consequences that has in terms of collaboration is usually neglected. This paper offers an empirical analysis of a Dutch partnership format developed over a period of four years, based on two interview rounds conducted between 2007 and 2010, supplemented with document analysis and a focus group. It focuses on changing challenges and dilemmas in different development stages and outlines which strategies are used.

textabstractPublic health policies and services are increasingly scrutinized for their quality and accountability and 'evidence-based' ways of working are becoming more important in most public sector activities. In the Netherlands this led to the development of academic collaborative centers (ACCs) for public health: formal, long-term collaborations between municipal health services, university departments and other stakeholders. In this paper we argue that discussing issues of research uptake or research utilization in terms of 'gaps' that need to be 'bridged' is unproductive when analyzing structural collaborations or partnerships between researchers, policy-makers and practitioners. Within collaborative settings such as the ACCs, the clear distinction between what counts as 'science' and what counts as 'policy' is only one side of the story. We use the notions of 'boundary organization' and 'front stage and back stage settings' to analyze a case study of a collaborative project conducted within one of the ACCs.

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.

The call for ‘evidence-based health policy’ in the Netherlands has to date been accommodated by the consensual policy tradition in this country and by the institutionalised arrangements for research funding, researcher career development and research accountability systems. The aim of this paper is to describe and explain from a sociological perspective how these arrangements for two-way research–policy interactions enable the co-production of ‘useable knowledge’ for ‘doable problems’ in health policy making. We conclude that many arrangements function as boundary objects that allow for mediation between research and policy. This mediation occurs via both frontstage and backstage processes. The backstage processes are an essential precondition for the co-production of acceptable evidence, policy advice and policy in the frontstage. However, as a result of the increasing emphasis on evidence-based policy, and an accompanying instrumentalisation of research use in the policy process, some of the characteristic, and until now productive, elements of the Dutch system are threatened.

Contains fulltext : 163359.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) BACKGROUND: The National Prevention Program ‘Everything is Health' (EiH) 2014–2016) has adopted a ‘Whole of Society' (WoS) approach by engaging societal and business organisations as well as public authorities and services to pledge their commitment ‘to the realisation of the EiH goals by conducting specific focused activities'. Our two-year evaluation focuses on the governance and organisational conditions for the coherence, spread, consolidation and accountability of health promotion activities in the pledges, and the functioning of the EiH arrangements. METHODS: Three research stages consist of (1) a literature study and exploratory interviews of similar programs such as the UK Responsibility Deal, and the Dutch Corporate Social Responsibility program; (2) a qualitative monitoring of the Program Office and a selection of pledges; and (3) a responsive evaluation among and between program officers and pledgeholders in the EiH Platform. RESULTS: We consider EiH to be a governance experiment sharing responsibilities for health among public and private actors while developing a sustainable social order. One condition is to build an infrastructure for sharing knowledge, experience and feedback for peer review in an advanced pledgeholder community of practice. Another condition is to discourage non-compliance. There will be no sustainable health impact without such a consolidating infrastructure. Evaluating such a complex, ambiguous and uncertain approach requires a careful interaction between evaluators and program officers, pledgeholders and stakeholders. The EiH Platform can serve as a joint evaluative infrastructure. CONCLUSIONS: Evaluating the EiH program as a governance experiment is a necessary precondition to organising health impact. Building a consolidating infrastructure for a sustainable order of responsibilities and health impact takes time, effort and risk. Evaluation design can set an example of an infrastructure for sustainable health impact.

Like any policy-relevant research, HIA faces the risk of not being used by decisions-makers. This article addresses the questions: “How do policy decisions come about?” and “How does this affect HIA?” Current literature in political-administrative sciences identifies three ways for decision-making: rational, incremental and mixed model. These models define the relationship between the policy process at stake and the HIA. In incremental or mixed model decision-making, use of HIA evidence by policy-makers is heavily dependent on their values in the context, which may result in conceptual utilization or may extend to strategic utilization. In rational decision-making, HIA provides information independent from the context, which results in instrumental utilization. HIA practitioners need to optimise utilization and produce an appropriate HIA by mapping the policy process. They can do this by asking the questions ‘What? How? Who? and What context? and by maintaining continuous communication with the decision-makers. An appropriate HIA is policy-, time- and place-specific: reflecting the decision-making of the policy at stake. Furthermore, HIA concerns two policy fields with two different contexts and, in some cases, two different decision-making models. The administrative requirements for an appropriate HIA need further exploration.