EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH AND HEALTH POLICY

Evidence-based practices in the field of health date back to old times. However, conceptualization of application in today’s literally and using it in the political process is a new issue. Evidence-based practices in the field of health have primarily become widely used in medicine and nursing. Development of evidence-based health policies has become questionable in the field of health in recent years. There are varieties of application areas using evidence in health policies. Evidence-based medicine, evidence-based health care, evidence-based treatment protocols, evidence-based intersectoral assessment, evidence-based technology assessments are some of these practices. However, problems can be occurred applying evidencebased health policy. These problems are caused by both the nature of the evidence and people benefit from it. The aim of this study is to present the importance of using evidence, analyze of evidence-based practices and discuss the barriers encountered in practices. For this purpose, firstly, the definition, development process and importance of evidence-based health policy were explained and the policy making models were given. In following sections, evidence-based health policy was explained with examples and its advantages were emphasized