What evidence informs government population health policy? Lessons from early childhood intervention policy in Australia

Abstract

Given that we know that policy making is 'iterative, continuous, incremental, subject to review and inherently political', how does evidence feed into policy? The term 'evidence-based policy' has become routinely used in government policy deliberations, but the rhetoric is often not matched by the reality. The systematic integration of evidence into policy and practice is rare. There is also ongoing debate on what constitutes evidence for policy. This paper proposes a way of categorizing, according to source, the evidence used for policy making. We draw on the literature and on the ideas and experiences of the key people (referred to here as policy 'actors') involved in the development of policies that support families and the early years of life in NSW and South Australia. The findings from this study suggest that a variety of types of evidence inform health policy making. This challenges the public health community to broaden its ideas on what constitutes evidence for policy and to recognize the validity of different types of evidence in better informing the policy process.