Search

In 2003 an executive order was issued banning industrially produced trans-fatty acids above a low level in food items in Denmark. To date, only a few other countries have followed Denmark's example. The way health consequences of trans fats were translated by the different actors enabled the creation of alliances between researchers, politicians, administration and industry. Danish researchers interpreted the research in a way to suit their 'mental maps' and to support their initially set goal to reduce industrially produced trans fats. The process displayed a 'co-production' where research and policymaking influenced research interpretations.

Reporting on an interview and observation-based study in Danish municipalities, this article deals with local policy workers and takes it's departure in the great variation we observed in implementation of centrally issued health promotion guidelines. We present five types of local policy workers, each of whom we found typified a specific way of reasoning and implementing the guidelines. This typology illustrates the diversity found within a group of local policy workers and helps explain the variability reported in most studies on policy/guideline implementation. On the level of individuals, variation in implementation is often explained by the implementers’ perceptions of need for, and potential benefits of the policy, self-efficacy and skill proficiency. We add ‘professionally related experiences’ as another explanation. We introduce the concepts of translation and hinterland to understand how and why people in the same positions receiving the same set of guidelines implement them differently and suggest that local policy workers’ professionally related experiences affect the frames in which they translate the guidelines and decide upon the strategies of implementation. As such, this article illustrates a residual order of implementation practice: the unruly and elusive part of public policy implementation, ordered only partly by the centrally issued policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education / Dansk Universitetspaedagogisk Tidsskrift is the property of University of Southern Denmark, Department of Business Communication & Information Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Analyzes the motivations for and methods of four national public health strategies. Information on public health, power and governmentality; Reasons for governments to improve the health of their populations; Identification of health problems of the population.