[EQ] Do we need an international collaboration for synthesizing health-system evidence?

Do we need an international collaboration for synthesizing health-system evidence?

Working Group on Health Systems Research Synthesis

Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research

20 May 2010

Available online PDF [12p.] at: http://bit.ly/b938WY

 

“…..Health system policy-makers and managers routinely face difficult decisions around improving health and promoting equity. They must consider complex questions about effective strategies for organizing the overall health system and about designing and implementing or changing and improving specific policy and programme options. For instance, does contracting out services to the private sector improve access to health care?

How could the health system best retain trained health care providers in underserved areas?

Do conditional cash transfers improve the uptake of health interventions?

These questions have a high relevance to many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). But how can scientific evidence – often difficult to find, unclear in its implications, and seemingly shifting from one year to the next – inform the answers to these questions? Similar challenges in clinical medicine have been addressed by the Cochrane Collaboration – an organization dedicated to helping healthcare providers, policy-makers, patients, their advocates and careers, make well-informed decisions about human health care by preparing, updating and promoting the accessibility of Cochrane Reviews which are both produced by, and are relevant to, everyone interested in the effects of health care.

The field of health systems research (HSR) may also benefit from a similar international collaboration for synthesizing health systems evidence. The collaboration could support the synthesizing and translating of health systems knowledge, as well as support the identifying of research gaps and the setting of research agendas for both primary and secondary research.

 

This consultation document explores this issue, based largely (although not exclusively) on presentations and subsequent discussion at a session on this topic held at the Global Forum for Health Research 2009 (1)…………”

Table of contents

1. Background

2. What benefits and challenges might be associated with a collaboration in synthesizing and translating health systems evidence?

2.1. Synthesizing

2.2. Translating

3. What kinds of knowledge syntheses could usefully inform decisions about strengthening health systems and what methods are appropriate for conducting such syntheses? .

4. To what extent do established collaborations already support synthesis and translation for health systems research and, what might an additional collaboration offer?

5. Questions for consideration

6. Next steps and contact details

References

Appendix

http://www.who.int/alliance-hpsr/alliancehpsr_consultationdoc_healthsystemsresearchsynthesis.pdf

 

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