Evidence, policies and practices: continuities and discontinuities in mental health promotion in a developing country
SOURCE: International Journal of Mental Health Promotion
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2004
TITLE AUTHOR(S): L.Swartz, M.Tomlinson, M.Landman
KEYWORDS: EVIDENCE, HEALTH SERVICES, MENTAL HEALTH, POLICY FORMULATION
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 2432
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/8179
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/8179
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2004
TITLE AUTHOR(S): L.Swartz, M.Tomlinson, M.Landman
KEYWORDS: EVIDENCE, HEALTH SERVICES, MENTAL HEALTH, POLICY FORMULATION
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 2432
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/8179
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/8179
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
The relationship between research evidence, policy and implementation is complex throughout the world, but where resources are scarce (especially in developing countries) there is a need to ensure rational implementation. With reference to a study on which we work, we show how the simple act of conducting research where resources are lacking affects implementability. We discuss five key issues with which researchers must engage is they wish to affect policy and implementation: evidence is not the only criterion by which implementation decisions are made, implementation decisions are often political rather than health-oriented in the narrow sense, there is often a difference in time scale between research enterprises and policy implementation, moving from research to the "real world" requires engagement with existing organisational systems, and we need to be able to tell the difference between changes in rhetoric and changes in the real world. The broad international context of funding and the scientific community also affect how researchers work in developing countries. We suggest that engagement with these apparently "non-scientific" concerns is essential to the work of researchers.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Clients' perceptions of the service offered by a public mental health clinic in the Western Cape
- Mental health policy development and implementation in four African countries
- Analysis of cost impact of HIV/AIDS on health service provision in nine regions, Tanzania: methodological challenges and lessons for policy
- Evidence-informed policymaking in practice: an overview from South Africa's Department of Environmental Affairs
- Book review: Goetz, A.M., Hassim, S. (eds.) (2003). No shortcuts to power: African women in politics and policy making. Cape Town: Zed Books. 246 p. ISBN 1842771477
- A history of public health in South Africa
- Clinical perspectives: strengthening infants and children: South African perspectives
- Integrating services, marginalizing patients: psychiatric patients and primary health care in South Africa
- HIV/AIDS in South Africa: entitlement and rights to health-implications of the 2002 household survey
- Where have all the ambulances gone?: the role of GIS in injury surveillance
- Impact of a mother-infant intervention in an indigent peri-urban South African context
- The elusiveness of integration: policy discources on open and distance learning in the 1990s
- Monitoring alcohol and drug abuse trends in South Africa. Proceedings of South African Community Epidiology Network on Drug Use (SACENDU) report back meetings, March/April 2002; July-December 2001: Phase 11
- Changing modes: a brief overview of the mode 2 knowledge debate and its impact on South African policy formulation
- Poverty, underdevelopment and infant mental health
- Interest group participation in the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC)
- Facts, fiction or fabrication? Service delivery, 1994-1999
- Equity, development, and new knowledge production: an overview of the new higher education policy environment in post-apartheid South Africa
- Introduction
- Globalization and emerging trends in African states' foreign policy-making process