title: Blueprint for a deliberative public forum on biobanking policy: were theoretical principles achievable in practice?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Public deliberation is recommended for obtaining citizen input to policy development when policies involve contested ethical dimensions, diverse perspectives on how to trade-off competing public interests and low public awareness of these perspectives. Several norms have been proposed for the design of deliberative methods. Evidence is scarce regarding whether such norms are achievable in practice.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This paper refers to principles of deliberative democracy theory to describe a deliberative public forum on biobanking. Practical challenges and contextual facilitators of achieving deliberative ideals are discussed, along with factors that influenced use of the forum output in policy development.
  
  
  METHODS
  The forum ran for 4 days over two weekends in Perth, Western Australia. Key methodological features were socio-demographic stratification to randomly recruit a mini-public of citizens for discursive representation, provision of information inclusive of diverse perspectives and framed for difference, provision of a fair way for reasoning and collective decision making and adoption of processes to achieve publicity, accountability and independence from undue institutional influence.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Most design principles were achieved in practice, with the fundamental exception of representativeness. Factors influencing these outcomes, and the use of deliberated outputs to develop policy, included institutional characteristics, the design involvement of deliberative experts and quality of the outputs when compared to other consultation methods.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Public deliberations can achieve design ideals and influence (ethics-based) public health policy. The representation of 'hard to reach' citizens and their views needs further consideration, particularly as this relates to the procedural legitimacy of ethical analyses and the just inclusion of deliberative citizen advice within the broader policy-making process.
authors.affiliation: Office of Population Health Genomics, Department of Health, Perth, WA 6849, USA. caron.molster@health.wa.gov.au
authors.forename: Caron
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Molster
authors.forename: Susannah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Maxwell
authors.forename: Leanne
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Youngs
authors.forename: Gaenor
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kyne
authors.forename: Fiona
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hope
authors.forename: Hugh
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Dawkins
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: O'Leary
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D018070:Biological Specimen Banks / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003256:Community Participation; D005260:Female; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011050:Policy Making; D011639:Public Opinion; D012941:Social Responsibility; D014904:Western Australia; D055815:Young Adult