Book contents
- Essential Public Health
- Essential Public Health
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part 1 The Public Health Toolkit
- 1 Health Needs Assessment
- 2 Health Information
- 3 Epidemiology
- 4 Evidence-Based Health-Care
- 5 Decision-Making and Priority Setting
- 6 Improving Quality of Care
- 7 Management, Leadership and Change
- 8 Improving Population Health
- 9 Screening
- 10 Health Protection and Communicable Disease Control
- Part 2 Contexts for Public Health Practice
- Glossary
- Index
- References
4 - Evidence-Based Health-Care
from Part 1 - The Public Health Toolkit
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2023
Book contents
- Essential Public Health
- Essential Public Health
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part 1 The Public Health Toolkit
- 1 Health Needs Assessment
- 2 Health Information
- 3 Epidemiology
- 4 Evidence-Based Health-Care
- 5 Decision-Making and Priority Setting
- 6 Improving Quality of Care
- 7 Management, Leadership and Change
- 8 Improving Population Health
- 9 Screening
- 10 Health Protection and Communicable Disease Control
- Part 2 Contexts for Public Health Practice
- Glossary
- Index
- References
Summary
How much of what health and other professionals do is based soundly in science? Answers to the question, ‘Is our practice evidence based?’ depend on what we mean by practice and evidence.
The expansion of evidence-based medicne (EBM) has been a major influence on medical practice over the past 25 years. In this chapter, we examine the nature of what is nowadays more broadly referred to as evidence-based health-care (EBHC) and discuss its limitations. It is worth noting that in the UK this field continues to expand, particularly into the arena of social care, which often goes hand in hand with the provision of health-care. Increasingly, the term ‘evidence-based practice’ (EBP) is used as a catch-all. While this chapter focuses on health-care, the principles of EBP we describe apply equally to other disciplines, including public health and policy.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Essential Public HealthTheory and Practice, pp. 82 - 94Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
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