Useful public health policy models need big data - but they also need theory

Policy models aim to predict the impact of future policy action. To meet this aim, models need both to describe a policy context and to explain it. Big data can be very helpful for description but – on its own – it cannot provide explanation. This talk will demonstrate state-of-the-art work to combine big data with theories of the social, towards development of the next generation of public health policy models.