All are invited to the CEDAR/MRC Epidemiology Seminar:

Politics, policy and the absence of evidence: decision making about speed restrictions in Edinburgh and Belfast.

Professor Mike Kelly, Primary Care Unit, Institute of Public Health, Cambridge.

Meeting Rooms 1&2, Level 4, Institute of Metabolic Science, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

Abstract

The cities of Edinburgh and Belfast have both introduced 20mph speed restrictions on certain of their roads in recent years.  This has been advanced in both places as offering a mixture of transport and public health benefits.  NIHR have funded an evaluation of the consequences of the decisions.  One part of that broader investigation has been a study of the way evidence was (and was not) part of the decision making process.  This paper reports some findings about the processes involved and the ways that that decision makers worked to get the schemes introduced.

About Professor Kelly

Mike Kelly is Senior Visiting Fellow in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the Institute of Public Health in Cambridge.  Between 2005 and 2014, when he retired, he was the Director of the Centre for Public Health at NICE.  From 2005 to 2007 he directed the methodology work stream for the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Commission on the Social Determinants of Health.  His research interests include the prevention of non-communicable disease, living with chronic illness, health inequalities, health related behaviour change, end of life care, dental public health, the relationship between evidence and policy and the methods and philosophy of evidence based medicine.

Twitter: @Mk744P

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