Driving evidence-based health policy

Driving Better Health Policy: “It’s the Evidence, Stupid”

Baicker and Chandra are backing an evidence-based health policy. I reviewed it in a previous post. Now the Uwe Reinhardt Memorial Lecture insists on it.

Speaking in favor of evidence-based health policy can be more controversial than one might think. Health policy analysts, health services researchers, and economists in particular often get in trouble by trying to quantify what many hold as unquantifiable and trying to put a price tag on what many think should be priceless.

This is the ouline of the lecture:

WHAT IS AND IS NOT A POLICY
Slogans are Not Policies
Differentiating Between Goals and Policies
EVIDENCE IS INHERENTLY EMPIRICAL
Evidence is Rarely Straightforward
Fact Patterns Alone Do Not Reveal Policy Effects
WORKING TO BASE POLICY ON EVIDENCE
Separating Evidence from Preferences
Using Evidence to Inform Policy

And these are the take-away messages:

• Serious policy assessment requires a detailed description of the policy—slogans are not policies.
• Clearly articulating and differentiating between goals and policies is crucial to evaluating the most effective way to achieve policy goals.
• Evidence is often mixed or ambiguous. Researchers should not let their own policy preferences bias their interpretation or synthesis of the evidence. 
• Evidence does not speak for itself. Researchers need to dedicate effort to timely, accessible, reliable translation.

Agreed. Unfortunately, our close politicians are not interested in evidence if it goes against their ideological criteria. Therefore, claiming evidence for health policy is useless, unless the premise of "politicians will take into account evidence" is really credible. The lecture forgot this "minor" issue, the cognitive biases of health policy.

Josep Segú