摘要：Public health leaders, like physicians, need to make decisions that impact health based on strong evidence. To generate useful evidence for public health leaders, research must focus on interventions that have potential to impact population-level health. Often policy and environmental changes are the interventions with the greatest potential impact on population health, but studying these is difficult because of limitations in the methods typically used and emphasized in health research. To create useful evidence for policy and environmental interventions, other research methods are needed, including observational studies, the use of surveillance data for evaluation, and predictive mathematical modeling. More emphasis is needed on these types of study designs by researchers, funding agencies, and scientific journals. Whereas the goal of pure scientific research is to increase knowledge, the goal of health research is more practically oriented to develop tools to combat human disease. Health research findings are often compiled into guidance that can be used by physicians to make evidence-based decisions. Undeniably, the translation of research into such guidance has led to more effective treatment of patients. But, whereas physicians have the utility of this evidence to guide their decisions, public health practitioners, who must also make decisions that impact health but usually on a much larger scale, often do not. Some see this as a failure of translation of research into action and have called for greater attention and funding for translational research as a means to improve health. 1 , 2 But the problem is less failure to translate research than it is to conduct research that is relevant to public health. Thus, the solution lies less in translation and more in the reorientation of our research questions and methods.
