Making Health Policy: Networks in Research and Policy after 1945

What shapes health policy? Current thinking dictates that scientific evidence should be the basis for policy making in healthcare, but is this a new approach, and how has it developed? Making Health Policy shows how networks in science and the media have established a dialogue for policy making since 1945. Surprisingly, many of the networks influencing health policy are not political ones central to public discussion. Instead, scientific networks have shaped policies on public health, based upon findings of chronic disease epidemiology. For policies on illicit drugs, the clinical experience of a small group of psychiatrists held sway. And ironically in an ever cost-conscious world, high-technology areas – such as renal dialysis – saw economic considerations diminish as time passed. Health pressure groups entered the equation, and the last half of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of the media as the defining agency in the science/policy relationship. Making Health Policy is the first historical study to explore the unspoken links between science and recent health policy. Contents Preface Abbreviations Virginia BERRIDGE: Making Health Policy: Networks in Research and Policy after 1945 Part 1: Making Public Health Policy Luc BERLIVET: ‘Association or Causation?’ The Debate on the Scientific Status of Risk Factor Epidemiology, 1947–c.1965 Betsy THOM: Who Makes Alcohol Policy? Science and Policy Networks,1950–2000 Virginia BERRIDGE: Issue Network versus Producer Network? ASH, the Tobacco Products Research Trust and UK Smoking Policy Mark W. BUFTON: British Expert Advice on Diet and Heart Disease c.1945–2000 Sarah MARS: Peer Pressure and Imposed Consensus: The Making of the 1984 Guidelines of Good Clinical Practice in the Treatment of Drug Misuse Part II: Evidence and Health Services Stuart ANDERSON: Evidence, Experts and Committees: The Shaping of Hospital Pharmacy Policy in Great Britain, 1948 to 1974 Jennifer STANTON: Renal Dialysis: Counting the Cost versus Counting the Need Jennifer STANTON: Intensive Care: Measurement and Audit in an Expensive Growth Area of Medicine Part III: The Media, Science and Policy Kelly LOUGHLIN: Publicity as Policy: The Changing Role of Press and Public Relations at the BMA, 1940s–80s Kelly LOUGHLIN: Networks of Mass Communication: Reporting Science, Health and Medicine in the 1950s and the ’60s Contributors Index