§ Mr. MorganTo ask the Secretary of State for Wales, pursuant to his answer of 2 March,Official Report, column 34, if he will give the names of the evaluation advisory group from within the United Kingdom with reference to Heartbeat Wales; and if he will publish their terms of reference.
§ Mr. Nicholas BennettDue to the complexities of analysing a community-based heart disease prevention programme, Heartbeat Wales, when established in 1985 sought advice on the development of the evaluation strategy for the programme from a wide range of people including Professor Geoffrey Rose, Professor Andrew Henderson, Professor Michael Marmot, Dr. Tom Meade, Professor Michael Oliver, Dr. Edward Coles and Dr. George Davey-Smith. Since then, the evaluation strategy has been subject to scientific peer review by Professor David Murray and Professor Bosse Haglund. Advice has also been sought from the principal researchers of other community-based heart disease prevention programmes, such as Professors Henry Blackburn, John Farquhar and Craig Lefebvre.
616WData from the programme are currently being independently analysed at the school of public health, university of Sydney and the school of psychology, university of Wales college, Cardiff. Papers from the programme are reviewed prior to publication by international experts such as Professor Leif Aaro and Cheryl Perry and Drs. Les Irwig and Bob Spassof, as well as by normal academic publishing procedures which includes peer review.
In 1987, the Heartbeat Wales programme was incorporated into the work of the Health Promotion Authority for Wales which also has a remit to develop initiatives in other areas such as cancer risk reduction and healthy sexuality. Within this broader remit, the authority identified a group of researchers known as the evaluation advisory group to support its research work. The remit of this group is
to act as a resource for the Authority, providing scientific and technical advice concerning its research and evaluation strategies and individual studies".Advice and support is sought from individual experts as appropriate to need. These experts include Professor Ray Hodgson, Dr. Beverley Littlepage, Mr. Robert Anderson, Dr. Gerald Hastings, Professor Geoffrey Rose, Professor Don Nutbeam, Dr. Ceri Phillips, Dr. Chris Skinner, Mr. Trefor Williams, Beaufort Research Ltd and Research and Marketing Ltd. Many other experts have been consulted informally, including the World Health Organisation which has recently designated the Health Promotion Authority for Wales, together with the university of Wales college of medicine institute for health promotion, as a joint collaborating centre, the only one of its kind in the United Kingdom and Europe.