Protecting the health of their citizens and preventing illness is a fundamental priority for communities, regions and countries around the world. Most have plans in place to guide their efforts and good public policy is integral to the success of those plans.

As those working in the area know developing policies in public health is not an easy task. There are many factors to consider: competing priorities, constrained resources, intersectoral barriers, ideology, changing structure, public opinion, and increasingly complex problems for which solutions are not obvious.

Given these factors, what are the best ways to define how to structure the delivery, funding, and prioritizing of population and public health? Research evidence is an ideal foundation for good policy but more effort is needed to integrate all forms of evidence, including conflicting evidence, to support policymaking.

Fuse 2018 will focus on how best to produce, integrate and communicate research evidence to help develop and evaluate policies in public health. Together, we will explore the use of research evidence in public health policymaking from around the world to discover what’s working, what’s not, and what are the trends, issues, and policy-related challenges across jurisdiction and sectors.

There will be a focus on both the practice and the science behind using evidence to inform public health policies. Presentations from various jurisdictions will focus on five themes:

• Economic evidence
• Practice-based evidence
• Communicating evidence
• Diversity in public health policy
• Partnerships between researchers and policy makers

Within these themes, attention will be paid to cross-cutting issues such as public and community engagement, issues around data, public and patient involvement, inter-sectoral partnerships, complexity and impact of jurisdictional issues.

Who should attend

This conference will be of interest to researchers, policy makers, public health practitioners and other research users with an interest in public and population health. Participants will learn from keynote presentations, debate panels, abstract presentations and from each other about the impact of jurisdictional issues, challenges in data access, inter-sectoral partnerships, complexity and perspectives on the most effective ways of incorporating evidence into the process of policymaking.