About the policy summaries

The Policy Summaries on this site have been been prepared by Public Health Specialty Registrars1 and others with general knowledge of the field of public health2. The summaries are written by interested individuals with general knowledge of the public health field who have applied skills in assessing and summarising evidence. However, please be aware that the authors have not been asked to conduct a full systematic review on their topic and are not necessarily leading experts in the specific subject area. These summaries simply provide a ‘snapshot’ of key evidence at the time of writing. We welcome comments highlighting any additional relevant evidence. With this in mind and given the likelihood that some policy proposals may develop with time, authors are invited to review and update their summaries as they see fit.

Some key principles have been applied to the preparation of our Policy Summaries:

  • The summaries should be evidence based
  • Where there is a lack of evidence, the summary should say so
  • They should be free of opinion and political bias
  • The audience of these summaries will vary widely, but as the intention is that they will be open access, they should be written in simple straightforward language, free from jargon
  • The reviews should present an overview of the literature of the subject, but this review will not be as detailed and thorough as a systematic review due to the time and resources this would involve

All summaries are structured as follows:

  • Overview of the proposed policy change
  • What is the evidence of potential benefits from this policy change?
  • What is the evidence of potential risks from this policy change?
  • What are the implications for health & well-being?

NICE Public Health Guidelines

Many of the summaries covered by The Lancet UK Policy Matters have been reviewed in guidance produced by NICE, which is the authoritative national guidance for policy makers and professionals on a particular topic. We strongly recommend that any readers wishing to find out more detail about the topic visit the NICE website here: http://guidance.nice.org.uk/PHG.

Footnotes:


1. Public Health Specialty Registrars are individuals undertaking specialist consultant training in Public Health. For more information on specialist training in public health see http://www.fph.org.uk/training

2. Exceptionally summaries have been prepared by individuals with relevant expertise in a specific area

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