Agenda-setting in health care policy

This chapter explores agenda-setting, which is generally regarded as the first stage of the policy process. It examines the different approaches found in both public policy and health policy texts. It then examines the main agenda-setting models in roughly chronological order, together with related studies in health care. It finds that while there has been no shortage of studies on agenda-setting in health care, we do not know a great deal about the topic, because of issues associated with both the breadth and depth of the literature. First, much of the breadth of the literature has largely been ignored in favour of a focus on the dominant approach of the Multiple Streams Framework. Second, many studies of the Multiple Streams Framework tend to lack depth, with limited attention to his major structural components, and sub-components.