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Joining the dots: the role of brokers in nutrition policy in Australia
BACKGROUND: Poor diet is the leading preventable risk factor contributing to the burden of disease in Australia. A range of cost-effective, comprehensive population-focussed strategies are available to address these dietary-related diseases. However, despite evidence of their effectiveness, minimal...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5385063/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28390418 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4217-8 |
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author | Cullerton, Katherine Donnet, Timothy Lee, Amanda Gallegos, Danielle |
author_facet | Cullerton, Katherine Donnet, Timothy Lee, Amanda Gallegos, Danielle |
author_sort | Cullerton, Katherine |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Poor diet is the leading preventable risk factor contributing to the burden of disease in Australia. A range of cost-effective, comprehensive population-focussed strategies are available to address these dietary-related diseases. However, despite evidence of their effectiveness, minimal federal resources are directed to this area. To better understand the limited public health nutrition policy action in Australia, we sought to identify the key policy brokers in the Australian nutrition policy network and consider their level of influence over nutrition policymaking. METHODS: A social network analysis involving four rounds of data collection was undertaken using a modified reputational snowball method to identify the nutrition policy network of individuals in direct contact with each other. Centrality measures, in particular betweenness centrality, and a visualisation of the network were used to identify key policy brokers. RESULTS: Three hundred and ninety (390) individual actors with 1917 direct ties were identified within the Australian nutrition policy network. The network revealed two key brokers; a Nutrition Academic and a General Health professional from a non-government organisation (NGO), with the latter being in the greatest strategic position for influencing policymakers. CONCLUSION: The results of this social network analysis illustrate there are two dominant brokers within the nutrition policy network in Australia. However their structural position in the network means their brokerage roles have different purposes and different levels of influence on policymaking. The results suggest that brokerage in isolation may not adequately represent influence in nutrition policy in Australia. Other factors, such as direct access to decision–makers and the saliency of the solution, must also be considered. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4217-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5385063 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-53850632017-04-12 Joining the dots: the role of brokers in nutrition policy in Australia Cullerton, Katherine Donnet, Timothy Lee, Amanda Gallegos, Danielle BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Poor diet is the leading preventable risk factor contributing to the burden of disease in Australia. A range of cost-effective, comprehensive population-focussed strategies are available to address these dietary-related diseases. However, despite evidence of their effectiveness, minimal federal resources are directed to this area. To better understand the limited public health nutrition policy action in Australia, we sought to identify the key policy brokers in the Australian nutrition policy network and consider their level of influence over nutrition policymaking. METHODS: A social network analysis involving four rounds of data collection was undertaken using a modified reputational snowball method to identify the nutrition policy network of individuals in direct contact with each other. Centrality measures, in particular betweenness centrality, and a visualisation of the network were used to identify key policy brokers. RESULTS: Three hundred and ninety (390) individual actors with 1917 direct ties were identified within the Australian nutrition policy network. The network revealed two key brokers; a Nutrition Academic and a General Health professional from a non-government organisation (NGO), with the latter being in the greatest strategic position for influencing policymakers. CONCLUSION: The results of this social network analysis illustrate there are two dominant brokers within the nutrition policy network in Australia. However their structural position in the network means their brokerage roles have different purposes and different levels of influence on policymaking. The results suggest that brokerage in isolation may not adequately represent influence in nutrition policy in Australia. Other factors, such as direct access to decision–makers and the saliency of the solution, must also be considered. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4217-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2017-04-08 /pmc/articles/PMC5385063/ /pubmed/28390418 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4217-8 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Cullerton, Katherine Donnet, Timothy Lee, Amanda Gallegos, Danielle Joining the dots: the role of brokers in nutrition policy in Australia |
title | Joining the dots: the role of brokers in nutrition policy in Australia |
title_full | Joining the dots: the role of brokers in nutrition policy in Australia |
title_fullStr | Joining the dots: the role of brokers in nutrition policy in Australia |
title_full_unstemmed | Joining the dots: the role of brokers in nutrition policy in Australia |
title_short | Joining the dots: the role of brokers in nutrition policy in Australia |
title_sort | joining the dots: the role of brokers in nutrition policy in australia |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5385063/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28390418 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4217-8 |
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