Direction of travel

What is the relationship between UK government policy on tackling health inequalities and the available research?  Not quite what we think, according to a paper published by the Socialist Health Association.  Its author reviews research and policy between 1997 and 2007, finding that, rather than being strictly evidence-based, policy in England and Scotland has rather been shaped around the transmission of research-based ideas. A similarly ambivalent approach to the use of the evidence base appears in an article published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.  Interviews with policy makers in six countries provides an insight into how they view barriers to and facilitators of the use of RCTs for social programmes.