Using evidence to inform health policy: case study

doi:10.1136/bmj.322.7280.222

BMJ 2001;322:222-225 ( 27 January )

Education and debate

Using evidence to inform health policy: case study

Editorial by George Davey Smith

Sally Macintyre, director ^a, Iain Chalmers, director ^b, Richard Horton, editor ^c, Richard Smith, editor ^d.

^a MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, Glasgow G12 8RZ, ^b UK Cochrane Centre, NHS Research and Development Programme, Oxford OX2 7LG, ^c Lancet, London WC1B 3SL, ^d BMJ, London WC1H 9JR

Correspondence to: S Macintyre Sally@msoc.mrc.gla.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Doctors are exhorted to practice evidence based medicine, and the British government says that it wants public policy to bebased on evidence.¹ We share the government's enthusiasm, butcan it become a reality rather than an aspiration? How much dowe know about what works, and are researchers, government ministers,and civil servants truly committed to developing and using thebestevidence?

We had an opportunity to learn about the realities of evidence based policy making when we were invited in late 1997 to becomean "evaluation group" to assist the independent inquiry into inequalitiesin health.²Our reflections concern the material submitted and the evaluationprocess, not the final report.

Table Removed (Available Only in the Full Text)

The independent inquiry into inequalities in health

In 1997 the minister for public health for England and Wales, Tessa Jowell, commissioned Donald Acheson, the former chiefmedical officer for England, to "moderate a Department of Healthreview of the latest available information on inequalities inhealth . . . and . . . [Full text of this article]

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