ABSTRACT
The Medical Research Council (MRC) wished to better understand the wider impact of MRC research output on society and the economy. The MRC wanted to compare the strengths of different types of funding and areas of research and identify the good news stories and successes it can learn from. As an initial step in this process RAND Europe: (1) examined the range of output and outcome information MRC already collected; and (2) used that analysis to suggest how data collection could be improved. This article outlines the approach taken to the second part of this exercise and focuses on the development of a new survey instrument to support the MRC's data collection approach. Readers should bear in mind that some later stages of survey development and implementation were conducted exclusively by the MRC and are not reported here.
ABSTRACT
Tobacco use is one of the largest avoidable causes of morbidity and premature death in the EU. Whilst smoking prevalence in the EU has been declining over the past 30 years, smoking has remained more prevalent among men than women in the EU-27, with some of the new Member States reporting the widest gaps between male and female smokers. For young smokers (13 to 15 years old) this situation is somewhat reversed, with slightly more girls than boys smoking. Against this background, the European Commission Directorate-General for Health and Consumer Protection (DG SANCO) considered a revision of the Tobacco Products Directive 2001/37/EC across five general areas: scope of the directive, labelling requirements, registration and market control fees, ingredients, and sales arrangements. More specifically, the types of policy options under consideration included (but were not limited to): an increase of warning label sizes on the back of packaging to 100%, a restriction for the display of products at retail outlets and an introduction of additional measurement method for TNCO (the modified ISO method) with maximum limits set accordingly. DG SANCO commissioned RAND Europe to provide support in assessing the potential health, macroeconomic, and compliance cost and administrative burden impacts of revising the Tobacco Products Directive. In addition to assessing impacts, the study provides an up-to-date overview of the evidence and basis for current tobacco product regulation that may be of interest to a wider audience interested in tobacco control policies.
ABSTRACT
The European Commission Health and Consumer Protection Directorate-General (DG SANCO) commissioned RAND Europe to provide support in developing a comprehensive data strategy for DG SANCO that meets the needs of increasingly evidence-based policymaking in the future. This work builds on previous work by RAND Europe conducted for DG SANCO, mapping out international good practice of data management. The work described in this study had two aims: to assess the current data management practices within DG SANCO that relate to the four specific issues identified by DG SANCO: data needs, DG SANCO data sources, key partnerships on data, and data quality; and to develop, on the basis of this review, recommendations for improving DG SANCO's current data management and the definition of DG SANCO's Good Practice Model for Data Strategy. This article presents the findings of RAND Europe's analysis.
