Building practice-based evidence

Abstract

Policy decisions on how best to intervene in order to prevent injury-causing events are increasingly expected to be based on the concepts expounded by the ‘evidencebased medicine’ (EBM) movement. As defined by Sackett, Rosenberg, Gray, Haynes, and Richardson (1996), EBM ‘is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research.’ However, the practice of medicine is focused on the individual, while the practice of injury control and safety promotion is focused on the public, and the field of public health is ‘a relative newcomer to the area of ‘evidence-based’ practice’ (Anderson et al. 2005). In the United States, the Task Force on Community Preventive Services was formed in 1996 to synthesise the research information on the effectiveness of health promotion and disease prevention interventions. Given the complexity of the available research and practice information for guiding policy and practice decisions, understanding how the evidence is gathered is important.