Antony Morgan

The Project on a Framework for Rating Evidence in Public Health (PRECEPT) was initiated and is being funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) to define a methodology for evaluating and grading evidence and strength of recommendations in the field of public health, with emphasis on infectious disease epidemiology, prevention and control. One of the first steps was to review existing quality appraisal tools (QATs) for individual research studies of various designs relevant to this area, using a question-based approach. Through team discussions and expert consultations, we identified 20 relevant types of public health questions, which were grouped into six domains, i.e. characteristics of the pathogen, burden of disease, diagnosis, risk factors, intervention, and implementation of intervention. Previously published systematic reviews were used and supplemented by expert consultation to identify suitable QATs. Finally, a matrix was constructed for matching questions to study designs suitable to address them and respective QATs. Key features of each of the included QATs were then analyzed, in particular in respect to its intended use, types of questions and answers, presence/absence of a quality score, and if a validation was performed. In total we identified 21 QATs and 26 study designs, and matched them. Four QATs were suitable for experimental quantitative study designs, eleven for observational quantitative studies, two for qualitative studies, three for economic studies, one for diagnostic test accuracy studies, and one for animal studies. Included QATs consisted of six to 28 items. Six of the QATs had a summary quality score. Fourteen QATs had undergone at least one validation procedure. The results of this methodological study can be used as an inventory of potentially relevant questions, appropriate study designs and QATs for researchers and authorities engaged with evidence-based decision-making in infectious disease epidemiology, prevention and control.

This study used a social capital framework to examine the relationship between a set of potential protective ('health assets') factors and the wellbeing of 15 year adolescents living in Spain and England. The overall purpose of the study was to compare the consistency of these relationships between countries and to investigate their respective relative importance.

The authors regret that an error was published in the above-mentioned article, which appeared in Health Promotion International Vol. 24/4. There was an error in column 1 of Table 3, whereby FAS headings Low (R), Medium, High appeared in the wrong order. The headings should have been: FAS High (R), Medium, Low. The corrected table appears in the next page (corrected entries appear in bold).

The following guidance has been published in 2010 to date: school-based interventions to prevent the uptake of smoking among children and young people (http://guidance.nice.org.uk/PH23).

Social capital has grown out of the recognition that health-related behaviours are shaped and constrained by a range of social and community contexts and that the ways in which an individual relates to social networks and communities has important effects on their health and well-being. Given the strong and complex inequalities that exist in adolescent health at both the national and international levels, social capital, acting a protective factor (or asset), may help reduce poor outcomes. The aim of this study was to measure and assess the relative importance of a range of social indicators representing the different domains of social capital on the health, wellbeing and health-related behaviours of young people. The study population was a random sample of 6425 school children aged 11–15 years old in 80 schools in England. Data were collected by a standardized questionnaire under supervised conditions in the classroom developed as part of the WHO Health Behaviour in School Aged Children (HBSC) study. This study has shown that social capital matters for young people's health, statistically significant relationships were found between the range of social capital indicators and the health and health-related outcomes selected for study. For example, young people with a low sense of family belonging and low involvement in the neighbourhood were almost twice as likely to report poor health (OR = 1.87 and 1.96, respectively). Low involvement in the neighbourhood was also highly associated with low consumption of fruit (OR = 2.48) and vegetables (OR = 2.62). Overall, however the strength of associations found varied across health behaviours and indicators of social capital and this requires further examination.