Interventions to improve public support for public health policy: a systematic review

This thesis explores corporate determinants of health and how transnational corporations oppose
evidence based policy measures aimed at reducing harm. Alcohol was explored as an example
where there is considerable population harm and where transnational corporations attempt to
influence health policies. The Lima and Galea (2018) framework was used to consider how the
alcohol industry influences population health to protect profits. Public support for policy measures
was shown to influence likelihood of adoption of evidence based policy to improve population
health. Studies of support for alcohol policy measures were explored in detail, and provided a
rationale for exploring interventions to promote public support for alcohol policy measures.
However, scoping searches found only one evaluation of an intervention to improve public support
for alcohol policy measures, therefore the work was broadened to include all public health policy
measures.

A systematic review was conducted to take stock of the evidence on the effectiveness of different
approaches to influencing public support for a range of public health policy measures. Components
of interventions demonstrating evidence of effect were explored in a narrative synthesis, and
effectiveness data for included studies was pooled using both random and fixed effects meta analyses
where appropriate. In summary, interventions of this type are shown to elicit small but
significant improvements in public support for public health policy measures.

Implications for future research are to build on the findings of this review to develop interventions
to improve public support for public health policy measures , with a focus on ‘real world’ settings
and engagement of key stakeholders to deliver the intervention to the general public. This could
contribute to improving public support for evidence based policy measures, increasing the likelihood
of adoption and implementation of these policies which will improve population health and reduce
harms due to noncommunicable diseases.