Policy guidance on threats to legislative interventions in public health: a realist synthesis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Legislation is one of the most powerful weapons for improving population health and is often used by policy and decision makers. Little research exists to guide them as to whether legislation is feasible and/or will succeed. We aimed to produce a coherent and transferable evidence based framework of threats to legislative interventions to assist the decision making process and to test this through the 'case study' of legislation to ban smoking in cars carrying children.

Methods

We conceptualised legislative interventions as a complex social interventions and so used the realist synthesis method to systematically review the literature for evidence. 99 articles were found through searches on five electronic databases (MEDLINE, HMIC, EMBASE, PsychINFO, Social Policy

SUBMITTER: Wong G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3079647 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature