Joanne Wilson

Translating policy into practice: A case study in the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease

Background  This paper focuses on the relationships between health ‘policy’ as it is embodied in official documentation, and health ‘practice’ as reported and reflected on in the talk of policy‐makers, health professionals and patients. The specific context for the study involves a comparison of policies relating to the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease (CHD) in the two jurisdictions of Ireland – involving as they do a predominantly state funded (National Health Service) system in the north and a mixed health‐care economy in the south. The key question is to determine how the detail of health policy as contained in policy documents connects to and gets translated into practice and action.