HPER-H 311 Epidemiology Health policy
Health policy impacts the well being of whole populations
•Policy: course of action taken by an institution or group
•Health policy: policy related to the health of a population
•Policy cycle:
1. Find problems: find and identify health issues within a community or population.
2. Set agenda: Health care workers and policy makers within a population work together to form
a plan of action
3. Establish policy: Policy must benefit community without hurting business, or being
unfeasible.
4.Implement policy: hardest part of the process: Must enforce policy successfully.
5. Assess policy effectiveness: can be hard to do because many precautions or exposures could
have similar outcomes
•Actors: people involved in making policy. Healthcare workers, scientists, politicians, etc.
•Stakeholders: anyone affected by policy
•Legitimization: making policies happen. Done through law, awareness campaigns, etc.
•Interest group: who benefits generally a whole population of people
•Problem definition, formulation, and reformulation: the process of defining the problems
that require policy change
•Agenda setting: finding priorities and determining who will deal with them
•Policy establishment: formally making a policy reality
•Implementation: getting everyone to follow policy
•Evidence based public health: policies are backed up by data.
•Cost effective analysis: costs vs effectiveness in policy
•Risk: likelihood of experiencing health effects
•Risk assessment: identifying who is at risk and how great the risk is
•Hazard identification: finding hazards and how they apply to human health
•Hazard: the ability something has to be harmful
