Institut National de Sante Publique du Quebec, National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy, 945 avenue Wolfe, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.
Soc Sci Med. 2010 May;70(10):1518-26. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.01.036. Epub 2010 Feb 12.
There have been calls in recent years for greater public involvement in health technology assessment (HTA). Yet the concept of public involvement is poorly articulated and little attention has been paid to the context of HTA agencies. This article investigates how public involvement is conceptualized in the HTA agency environment. Using qualitative concept analysis methods, we reviewed the HTA literature and the websites of HTA agencies and conducted semi-structured interviews with informants in Canada, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. Our analysis reveals that HTA agencies' role as bridges or boundary organizations situated at the frontier of research and policymaking causes the agencies to struggle with the idea of public involvement. The HTA community is concerned with conceptualizing public involvement in such a way as to meet scientific and methodological standards without neglecting its responsibilities to healthcare policymakers. We offer a conceptual tool for analyzing the nature of public involvement across agencies, characterizing different domains, levels of involvement, and types of publics.
近年来，人们呼吁让更多公众参与卫生技术评估 (HTA)。然而，公众参与的概念尚未得到明确阐述，而且很少有人关注 HTA 机构的背景。本文研究了公众参与在 HTA 机构环境中是如何被概念化的。我们使用定性概念分析方法，审查了 HTA 文献和 HTA 机构的网站，并对来自加拿大、丹麦和英国的知情者进行了半结构化访谈。我们的分析表明，HTA 机构作为处于研究和决策制定前沿的桥梁或边界组织的角色，导致机构在公众参与的理念上存在困难。HTA 界关注的是，以一种既能满足科学和方法学标准，又不忽视其对医疗保健政策制定者责任的方式来概念化公众参与。我们提供了一个概念工具，用于分析不同机构中公众参与的性质，描述不同的领域、参与程度和公众类型。
