Department of Health Promotion, NUTRIM School for Nutrition and Translational Research in Metabolism, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, Netherlands.
Department Tranzo, Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, Netherlands.
Biomed Res Int. 2017;2017:1979153. doi: 10.1155/2017/1979153. Epub 2017 May 25.
The role of health broker is a relatively new one in public health. Health brokers aim to create support for efforts to optimise health promotion in complex or even "wicked" public health contexts by facilitating intersectoral collaborations and by exchanging knowledge with different stakeholders. The current study aimed to explore the role of health brokers, by examining the motivational, contextual, and behaviour-related factors they have to deal with.
Fifteen professionals from various backgrounds and from various policy and practice organisations were recruited for a semistructured interview. To structure the interviews, we developed the "Health Broker Wheel" (HBW), a framework we then specified with more details derived from the interviews.
We identified seven primary types of behaviour that health brokers need to engage in: recognizing opportunities, agenda setting, implementing, network formation, intersectoral collaboration, adaptive managing, and leadership. Determinants of health brokers' behaviours were identified and categorised as capability, opportunities, motivation, and local or national contextual factors.
The health brokers' role can be seen as an operational approach and is visualised in the HBW. This framework can assist further research to monitor and evaluate this role, and health promotion practitioners can use it as a tool to implement the health brokers' role and to facilitate intersectoral collaboration.
健康经纪人在公共卫生领域是一个相对较新的角色。健康经纪人旨在通过促进跨部门合作和与不同利益相关者交流知识，为优化复杂甚至“恶劣”公共卫生环境中的健康促进工作提供支持。本研究旨在通过考察健康经纪人必须应对的激励、背景和行为相关因素来探索健康经纪人的角色。
从不同背景和不同政策及实践组织中招募了 15 名专业人员进行半结构化访谈。为了组织访谈，我们开发了“健康经纪人车轮”（HBW）框架，然后根据访谈中得出的更详细信息对其进行了具体说明。
我们确定了健康经纪人需要从事的七种主要行为类型：识别机会、设定议程、实施、建立网络、跨部门合作、适应性管理和领导力。确定了影响健康经纪人行为的决定因素，并将其归类为能力、机会、动机以及当地或国家的背景因素。
健康经纪人的角色可以被视为一种操作方法，并在 HBW 中得到体现。该框架可以帮助进一步的研究来监测和评估这一角色，健康促进从业者可以将其用作实施健康经纪人角色和促进跨部门合作的工具。
