Consuming research, producing policy?

The authors' 1990 article 'Producing Health, Consuming Health Care' presented a conceptual framework for synthesizing a rapidly growing body of findings on the nonmedical determinants of health. The article received a very positive response, and here the authors reflect on what lessons might be learned from that response about the style or content of effective interdisciplinary communication. Much substantive knowledge has been accumulated since 1990, and a number of different frameworks have been developed before and since. The authors situate theirs within this literature and consider how they might have modified it if they 'knew then what they know now.' They ask what impact this article, and the much broader stream of research on the determinants of health, has had on public policy? (Am J Public Health. 2003;93:371-379)