Abstract
This article is part of a series written for people responsible for making decisions about health policies and programmes and for those who support these decision makers.In this article, we address ways of organising efforts to support evidence-informed health policymaking. Efforts to link research to action may include a range of activities related to the production of research that is both highly relevant to – and appropriately synthesised for – policymakers. Such activities may include a mix of efforts used to link research to action, as well as the evaluation of such efforts. Little is known about how best to organise the range of activity options available and, until recently, there have been relatively few organisations responsible for supporting the use of research evidence in developing health policy. We suggest five questions that can help guide considerations of how to improve organisational arrangements to support the use of research evidence to inform health policy decision making. These are: 1. What is the capacity of your organisation to use research evidence to inform decision making? 2. What strategies should be used to ensure collaboration between policymakers, researchers and stakeholders? 3. What strategies should be used to ensure independence as well as the effective management of conflicts of interest? 4. What strategies should be used to ensure the use of systematic and transparent methods for accessing, appraising and using research evidence? 5. What strategies should be used to ensure adequate capacity to employ these methods?
Highlights
We present five questions that policymakers and those who support them could ask when considering how to improve support for the use of research evidence to inform health policy decisions
These frameworks have overlapping purposes and concepts. One of these frameworks focuses on assessing countrylevel efforts to link research to action. This framework provides an inventory of a range of activities that can be considered when developing organisational arrangements to support the use of research evidence to inform health policy decisions [20]
A scorecard, such as the one shown in Additional File 2, can be used to assess the capacity of an organisation to support its use of research evidence
Summary
We present five questions that policymakers and those who support them could ask when considering how to improve support for the use of research evidence to inform health policy decisions. One of these frameworks focuses on assessing countrylevel efforts to link research to action This framework provides an inventory of a range of activities that can be considered when developing organisational arrangements to support the use of research evidence to inform health policy decisions [20]. It addresses the key steps needed to ensure the appropriate use of research evidence to inform decisions related to health policies and programmes This tool is intended to help organisations assess and improve their capacity to use research evidence. Agreed processes and methods are essential in order to manage possible competing tensions arising from the demands of both collaboration and independence They are important as ways to ensure the systematic and transparent access and appraisal of evidence as an input into the policymaking process. Another strategy that many organisations identified was the use of more rapid methods that are rigorous but less resource-intensive – especially those that would result in a reduction in the time required of skilled staff
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