Paper long abstract:

The rationale which permeates the political field of governing health in Denmark is that evidence based policies are considered the means to improve public health.

'Health Promotion Package against Overweight' is a new policy guideline from the Danish Health and Medicine Authority, which aims to advice Danish municipalities in preventing overweight. This 'package' is topical in municipalities' current work and especially interesting as it is not evidence based despite the political focus on evidence. I investigate how this politically promoted overweight prevention guideline is negotiated and practiced. Which role do (lack of) 'evidence' play? How is this influential in the unfolding of the guideline in practice?

Articulated a 'package', the guideline is framed as an enriching object that is transferred directly between a sender and receiver. Contrarily, considering the guideline as an actor, the guideline gets agency, interact with and is translated in relation with actors at different levels (state, regional, municipal and citizen). Taking an explorative approach, I travel with the policy by combining retrospective insights in the conduction of the policy with a practice-based analysis of the actual unfolding. Preliminary findings suggest that 'lack of evidence' is not essential for the municipal decision makers, indicating a mere negligible role of evidence in the play of governance. Furthermore, the guideline is not only enacted to a different degree among the municipalities, but also translated in different ways according to the context it unfolds in; ranging from a legitimizing tool used with a persuasive aim to pure normative prescriptions.