Health Equity: 02/24/12

Friday, February 24, 2012

[EQ] Amazon Region: Environment and Health in the Context of Sustainable Development - Online seminar February 29, 2012

SDE Seminar Series towards Rio+20
Sustainable Development and Environmental Health – SDE - PAHO/WHO

Amazon Region: Environment and Health in the Context of Sustainable Development:
An overview of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization

Fourth Seminar: February 29, 2012 – PAHO/WHO Rio+20

Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm - Eastern Standard Time (Washington DC USA)

To check local time in WDC against your time zone, see the World Clock at:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

Website PAHO/WHO Rio+20 at: http://bit.ly/oxoRdS

AMAZON COOPERATION TREATY ORGANIZATION- ACTO

· The Amazon Cooperation Treaty (ACT), signed in July 1978 by Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela, is the legal instrument that recognizes the transboundary nature of the Amazon. http://bit.ly/AhDGLh

· Health plays a vital role in sustainable human development and is therefore one of the main challenges of the Amazon.

· The Amazon Basin’s biological diversity is staggering. It holds the largest area of contiguous tropical forest in the world

· Link to Declaration on Rio+20 adopted at the Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, in Manaus, Brazil, last November
http://bit.ly/wttcoQ

Agenda

12:00 - Welcome and introduction
Dr Agnes Soares, Regional Advisor in Environmental Epidemiology, PAHO/WHO

12:05 - Strategic guidelines of the Organization of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty for Rio+20
Ambassador Dr Mauricio Dorfler, Executive Director, ACTO

12:15 - Health and Sustainable Development in the Amazon countries
Dr Antonio Restrepo Botero, Health Coordinator, Permanent Secretariat, Organization of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty and
Executive Secretary of the Pan Amazonian Science and Health Technology & Innovation Network.

12:25 - Environmental Health Surveillance
Dr Luis Francisco Sanchez Otero, Coordinator, Environmental Health Surveillance System Project in the Amazon Region

12:35 – Commments
Lucimar Cosser Cannon, Advisor PAHO/WHO

Moderador: Dr Agnes Soares, Regional Advisor in Environmental Epidemiology, PAHO/WHO

How to participate:

In person:
PAHO/WHO
525 23^rd ST NW
Washington DC, 20037 Room C – 12h to 13h Eastern Time (WDC)

Online: via Elluminate link:

- Spanish room: www.paho.org/virtual/SeminariosSDE

- English room www.paho.org/virtual/SDESeminars

SDE Seminar Series towards Rio+20

"Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development.
They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature" - Principle 1 of the Rio…..” Declaration on Environment and Development, 1992.

The Rio Declaration of 1992 recognizes that healthy populations are central to human progress and sustainable development, and remains equally true today. However, the economic pillar has been prioritized at the expense of the social and environmental pillars of sustainable development over the last few decades, becoming itself a source of volatility and destabilization .

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development , Rio+20, now offers an opportunity to re-examine the relationship between health and sustainable development. The proposed SDE Seminar series towards Rio+20 aim at contributing to this important debate by bringing different themes of relevance to sustainable development and health to inform all areas of the Pan American Organization about the themes under discussion in the Rio Conference, but also to inform public health stakeholders and other decision makers in the health sector, to better take part in the debate.

The SDE Seminar series will happen every Wednesday from 12 to 1pm (Washington time), from February 8 to June 13th.

All Seminars will be life-streamed, and opened for participation in person at the PAHO/WHO HQ, or via Elluminate, or via telephone line.
Some of the Seminars will be in English, others in Spanish.

For those who cannot follow the seminar alive, they will be available later at PAHO Rio+20 Toolkit at: http://bit.ly/oxoRdS

Contact Information: Dr. Agnes Soares soaresag@paho.org

Twitter http://twitter.com/eqpaho

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[EQ] Health Policy and Systems Research: A Methodology Reader

Health Policy and Systems Research: A Methodology Reader

Edited by Lucy Gilson

Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research
World Health Organization 2012

Available online as PDF file [474p.] at: http://bit.ly/x7tSkg

“……..This Reader aims to support the development of the field of Health Policy and Systems Research HPSR, particularly in LMICs. It complements the range of relevant texts that are already available by providing a particular focus on methodological issues for primary empirical health policy and systems research.

There are four main sections in the Reader:

Part 1 provides an overview of the field of Health Policy and Systems Research HPSR in LMICs and some of the key challenges of this kind of research.

Part 2 outlines key steps to follow when conducting HPSR studies.

Part 3 presents some key references of papers which provide overarching conceptual frameworks for understanding health policy and health systems.

Part 4 is the main body of the Reader and presents a set of empirical papers drawn exclusively from LMICs.
The papers were selected because they:
- together demonstrate the breadth and scope of Health Policy and Systems Research HPSR work

- provide good examples of different forms of research strategy relevant to HPSR
- are high quality and innovative.

Part 5 presents a set of references for papers that reflect on specific concepts or methods relevant to Health Policy and Systems Research HPSR as well as some of the particular challenges of working in this field.

…..The defining feature of primary Health Policy and Systems Research HPSR is that it is problem- or question-driven, rather than, as with epidemiology, method driven. Therefore, as outlined in Part 2, the first step in doing rigorous and good quality research is to clarify the purpose of the research, what the study is trying to achieve, and to identify and develop relevant and well-framed research questions.

Good quality work then demands an understanding of the research strategy that is appropriate to the questions of focus. The strategy is neither primarily a study design nor a method, but instead represents an overarching approach to conducting the research; it considers the most appropriate methods of data collection and sampling procedure in terms of the research purpose and questions.

The art of study design in Health Policy and Systems Research HPSR, as with all ‘real world research’, is about turning research questions into valid, feasible and useful projects….”

Content

Part 1

Introduction to Health Policy and Systems Research

1. What is Health Policy and Systems Research?

2. Health systems

Goals

Elements and characteristics

Multi-levels of operation

Interactions and interrelationships

3. Health system development or strengthening

4. Health policy

5. Health policy analysis

Policy actors

The focus and forms of policy analysis

6. The boundaries of Health Policy and Systems Research HPSR

7. Understanding the nature of social and political reality

Positivism

Relativism

Critical realism

Health Policy and Systems Research HPSR perspectives on causality, generalizability and learning

Part 2

Doing HPSR: Key steps in the process Understanding Health Policy and Systems .

Step 1: Identify the research focus and questions

Networking and creative thinking

Literature search

Key challenges

Identifying the purpose of the research

Taking account of multidisciplinarity

Finalizing research questions

Step 2: Design the study

Using theory and conceptual frameworks to inform the study

Step 3: Ensure research quality and rigour

Step 4: Apply ethical principles

References

Part 3

Health system frameworks

Bloom G, Standing H, Lloyd R (2008). Markets, information asymmetry and health care: Towards new social contracts.

de Savigny D et al. (2009). Systems thinking: What it is and what it means for health systems. In: de Savigny D, Adam T, eds. Systems thinking for health systems strengthening.

Conceptual frameworks for HPSR

Atun R et al. (2010). Integration of targeted health interventions into health systems: a conceptual framework for analysis.

Bossert T (1998). Analyzing the decentralization of health systems in developing countries: decision space, innovation and performance.

Brinkerhoff D (2004). Accountability and health systems: toward conceptual clarity and policy relevance.

Franco LM, Bennett S, Kanfer R (2002). Health sector reform and public sector health worker motivation: a conceptual framework.

Gilson L (2003). Trust and health care as a social institution.

Kutzin J (2001). A descriptive framework for country-level analysis of health care financing arrangements.

Vian T (2007). Review of corruption in the health sector: theory, methods and interventions.

Walt G, Gilson L (1994). Reforming the health sector in developing countries: the central role of policy analysis.

Part 4

Empirical papers

Overview: research strategies and papers

1. Cross-sectional perspectives

2. The case study approach

3. The ethnographic lens

4. Advances in impact evaluation

5. Investigating policy and system change over time

6. Cross-national analysis

7. Action research

Part 5

Reflections on Health Policy and Systems Research

Twitter http://twitter.com/eqpaho

Thank you.