EATWELL Project: Approaching European healthy eating policies from a multi-disciplinary perspective / Proyecto EATWELL: enfocando las políticas europeas de alimentación saludable desde un punto de vista multidisciplinario

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Interventions to promote healthy eating habits: evaluation and recommendations.

Although in several EU Member States many public interventions have been running for the prevention and/or management of obesity and other nutrition-related health conditions, few have yet been formally evaluated. The multidisciplinary team of the EATWELL project will gather benchmark data on healthy eating interventions in EU Member States and review existing information on the effectiveness of interventions using a three-stage procedure (i) Assessment of the intervention's impact on consumer attitudes, consumer behaviour and diets; (ii) The impact of the change in diets on obesity and health and (iii) The value attached by society to these changes, measured in life years gained, cost savings and quality-adjusted life years. Where evaluations have been inadequate, EATWELL will gather secondary data and analyse them with a multidisciplinary approach incorporating models from the psychology and economics disciplines. Particular attention will be paid to lessons that can be learned from private sector that are transferable to the healthy eating campaigns in the public sector. Through consumer surveys and workshops with other stakeholders, EATWELL will assess the acceptability of the range of potential interventions. Armed with scientific quantitative evaluations of policy interventions and their acceptability to stakeholders, EATWELL expects to recommend more appropriate interventions for Member States and the EU, providing a one-stop guide to methods and measures in interventions evaluation, and outline data collection priorities for the future.

Barriers to evidence-based decision making among Polish healthcare managers.

The 1999 reform of the Polish healthcare system revealed deficiencies in the research base and a lack of organized systems of information provision. Professionals who most need effective information systems are policymakers and healthcare managers. The main aim of the described study was to obtain data describing the needs, preferences and limitations of healthcare managers as information users, and to identify environmental factors influencing their information behaviour. A national postal survey was conducted and supplemented with information collected during focus groups, semi-structured interviews and through analysis of relevant policy documents. The target population included hospital chief executives, medical directors, head nurses and directors of the institutions responsible for health services planning and purchasing. Target institutions were drawn systematically from official lists, stratified by regions of the country and hospital reference level. The interviews were conducted with primary care unit managers and with Ministry of Health officials. National health strategy and directives, cost-effectiveness analyses of interventions and clinical practice guidelines emerged as information of primary importance to respondents. The main barriers to effective information behaviour were found to be: attitudes towards research activity, lack of appropriately processed data, lack of skills enabling information seeking and appraisal, inappropriate format of publications, ineffective dissemination of information and absence of services facilitating access to evidence. The current information environment of healthcare managers, together with their attitude towards information and deficiencies in information skills, appear to serve as a barrier to evidence-based practice in the Polish healthcare system.