Author: Bruce Alberts (Science)

Science's editorial, against the use of the journal impact factor in judging the individual scientist's work.

Geoff Wong, Ray Pawson and Lesley Owen

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. This paper details work which 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.

EU news source, Portal, identifies ALICE RAP as one of the major pan-European initiatives tackling the problems of addiction, with a special focus on youth.

Pawson R, Greenhalgh T, Harvey G, Walshe K.

This paper offers a model of research synthesis which is designed to work with complex social interventions or programmes, and which is based on the emerging 'realist' approach to evaluation. It provides an explanatory analysis aimed at discerning what works for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects and how.

Author: WHO Regional Office for Europe

While the overall level of health across the WHO European Region has clearly improved, European health statistics show inequities within and between countries, according to the European health report 2012. The report is WHO/Europe’s flagship publication, issued every three years.

The report covers the Region’s 53 countries and nearly 900 million people, revealing that people are living longer and healthier lives. Life expectancy is rising across the Region, increasing by 5 years since 1980 to reach 76 years in 2010.