Evidence For Population Health

by Heller, Richard F.

• ISBN13: 9780198529743
• ISBN10: 0198529740
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Evidence based medicine has had a major impact on clinical practice. There is an urgent need for the Public Health community to further develop its own evidence base as many interventions are introduced, unchallenged with no hope of evaluation as the tools for this do not exist. This well structured text aims to provide the tools to achieve this aim. Mindful of the varying needs of students, practitioners and policy makers, the author highlights key take home messages for each and provides practical methods, and their theoretical basis, for applying evidence to the fieldof Public Health. Some of the methods are well established, others are newly developed by the author and colleagues. The book is aimed at all health students and practitioners, at whatever level, with the hope that the reader will apply these methods to their thinking, research and practice.

Table of Contents

Part I Ask the question---what is the need for evidence for population health?
What is evidence for population health?	3	(6)
The population or the individual in public health?	9	(6)
Shifting the distribution	15	(10)
Part II Collect the evidence---what measures should we make?
Measuring the population impact	25	(18)
Measuring the population impact of risk	25	(6)
Measuring the population impact of interventions	31	(6)
Health impact assessment, health needs assessment and summary measures of population health	37	(2)
Appendix A. Population Attributable Risk (PAR)	39	(1)
Appendix B. Population Impact Number of Eliminating a Risk factor (PIN-ER-t)	40	(1)
Appendix C. Disease Impact Number (DIN) and Population Impact Number (PIN)	40	(1)
Appendix D. Number to be Treated in your Population (NTP) and Number of Events Prevented in your Population (NEPP)	40	(3)
Evaluating population-based risks and interventions	43	(12)
Getting the outcome measure right	55	(10)
Public health informatics: the role of e-science in building the evidence base	65	(10)
Part III Understand and use the evidence-how can professionals and the public understand and use evidence to improve population health?
Perceptions of risk among policy-makers and the public	75	(8)
Managing knowledge for population health	83	(8)
Applying evidence to inform public health practice and health policy decision-making	91	(8)
Individual or population priorities for population health: involving the public	99	(8)
Evidence into action: population impact assessment and population health decision support	107	(16)
Index	123