Qualitative evidence, knowledge translation, and policy-making, with reference to health technology assessment

Abstract

Although efforts to draw qualitative evidence into health-related policymaking and health technology assessment (HTA) processes have increased in recent years, the range of sources consulted are still limited and the theoretical foundations for consulting them are underdeveloped. This essay builds on such recent scholarship by opening up conventional models of knowledge translation to the possibilities of qualitative evidence and by demonstrating the utility of this wider range of qualitative evidence – signally that of humanities scholarship – in health-related policymaking. The essay will use themes of pain and narrativity to illustrate both the particular complexity of policymaking in HTA – whereby social, ethical, and moral variables are at play – and the mitigating effect humanities scholarship, at its best, might have on this fraught process. About