Public Health Policymaking, Politics, and Evidence

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter explores the gradient of public health engagement and relationships with politics and political science. On one hand, public health values evidence-based decision-making grounded in orthodox hierarchies of evidence, while on the other, by nature of the issues, there are challenges to obtaining this data and to omitting values and contextual considerations. Additionally, public health competes with other health sectors for time and funding which makes political spheres difficult to break into as public health researchers. Apart from some critical public health scholars, many public health researchers have limited knowledge of policy-related concepts. This chapter describes a gradual shift from evidence-based to evidence-informed decision-making in policy, and what this means for conceptualizing policymaking and politics from a public health lens. Most importantly, the chapter describes the importance of the community as the space from which issues are identified, evidence is generated, and solutions are contextually bound.