1. Supporting evidence-informed policy and practice
Louise Bradley
Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH)
Introduction to the Health Well, April 11th 2013

2. Institute of Public Health in Ireland
All-Ireland body:
 North-South cooperation
 Inequalities in health
Social determinants of health
Three work strands:
 Capacity building
 Policy support
 Information & intelligence
www.publichealth.ie

3. The Health
Well
www.thehealthwell.info

4. The Health Well
• Unique all-island health information website
• Designed to support evidence-informed policy and practice
• Covers population health, and health & social care
• Managed by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) in
collaboration with
– HRB Centre for Health and Diet Research at University College Cork (UCC)
and University College Dublin (UCD)
– UKCRC Centre of Excellence for Public Health (NI) at Queen’s University
Belfast (QUB)

5. Our partners, so far ….
noo
National Obesity
Observatory

6. Benefits of using the Health Well
• A portal, not a repository
– Generates traffic for all of its contributors
– Diverse range of authoritative sources of information
• Save time
– don’t have to search multiple sites
– Thematic Hubs
• Work collaboratively over the web
– Social media tools
– Webgroups
• Tools to help you use information more effectively
– Free online user accounts (save relevant materials)
– Data tools

7. How information is presented on the Health Well
Interventions
Policy
Data
Evidence
News
Organisations
Over 800 health-related interventions
Over 1,900 policies and strategies
Over 2,700 health-related data sources
Evidence
• Peer-reviewed literature (Article summaries
from Open Access Journals)
• Systematic reviews
• Other research and evaluations (“Grey
literature”)
• Guidance
News
• Current affairs
• Events
• Bulletins and Newsletters

8. Thematic hubs on priority health topics
http://fuelpoverty.thehealthwell.info
http://healthinequalities.thehealthwell.info
http://chronicconditions.thehealthwell.info
http://obesity.thehealthwell.info