1. Supporting Research Use by Health System Managers and Policymakers
8 January 2009
Supporting Research Use by
Health System Managers and Policymakers
Knowledge Translation (KT) Canada Lecture Series Videoconference
Toronto, ON, Canada

2. Learning Objectives
1. What do we know about supporting research use by health system managers and policymakers?
2. What are the challenges that such efforts are striving to overcome?
3. What are some innovative strategies that are being developed and evaluated?

3. Supporting Research Use by Health System Managers & Policymakers
Increasingly efforts to support research use strive to address the two factors that emerged with some consistency in a systematic review of the factors that increased the prospects for research use
Interactions between researchers and policymakers
Engage policymakers in priority-setting, research (including reviews), and deliberative dialogues
Timing / timeliness
Facilitate retrieval of optimally packaged, topical systematic reviews and review-derived products (e.g., one-stop shopping, training workshops, rapid response units)

4. Supporting Research Use by Health System Managers & Policymakers (2)
process ►
Policy-
making
process
Policy-
making
process
Unlinked asynchronous processes
Research
process ► ◄ ◄
Fortuitously linked processes
Policy-
making
process
Research
process
Knowledge-
translation
processes ◄ ► ►
Purposefully linked processes

5. Supporting Research Use by Health System Managers & Policymakers (3)
Such efforts need to recognize that research evidence can play many roles in management and policymaking
Helps to get problems on the agenda (i.e., what challenges should we focus on?)
Helps to think about problems and solutions differently (i.e., how should we begin to approach this challenge?)
Helps to solve particular problems at hand (i.e., what policy or action should we support?)
Helps to justify a decision made for other reasons (i.e., how can we ‘sell’ the position we’ve taken?)

6. Challenges in Linking Research to Policy
Research competes with many other factors in the policymaking process
Research isn’t valued as an information input
Research isn’t relevant
Research isn’t easy to use

7. Addressing Challenge 1 Challenge 1
Research competes with many other factors in the policymaking process
Institutional constraints (e.g., constitutional rules)
Interest group pressure
Citizens’ values
Other types of information (e.g., experience)
One option (among many) for addressing challenge 1
Improve democratic processes (but this is beyond the scope of most of us) or create “routine” processes (as many countries have done for new technologies)

8. Addressing Challenge 2 Challenge 2
Research isn’t valued as an information input
One option (among many) for addressing challenge 2
Convince policymakers to place value on the use of research by highlighting examples from the past or from other jurisdictions where research made the difference between policy success and policy failure

9. Addressing Challenge 3 Challenge 3 Research isn’t relevant
One option (among many) for addressing challenge 3
Engage policymakers periodically in priority-setting processes and communicate the priorities to researchers (including short-term requirements for evidence briefs, medium-term term requirements for systematic reviews, and long-term requirements for new primary research)

10. Addressing Challenge 4a
Research isn’t easy to use
Challenge 4a
Research isn’t communicated effectively (i.e., policymakers hear noise instead of music)
One option (among many) for addressing challenge 4a
Identify a high-priority issue, identify systematic reviews that address different facets of the issue, identify messages arising from the reviews, construct workable options for consideration, and send the resulting ‘evidence brief’ to policymakers - e.g., 27 reviews (1/6/6/14) re ACT to treat malaria

11. Review- derived products (e.g., evidence briefs)
Systematic reviews of research
Applied research studies, articles, and reports
Basic, theoretical and methodological innovations

12. Addressing Challenge 4b
Research isn’t easy to use
Challenge 4b
Research isn’t available when policymakers need it and in a form that they can use
Two options (among many) for addressing challenge 4b
Maintain a policymaker-targeted website that provides “one stop shopping” for optimally packaged, topical reviews (e.g., PPD/CCNC database)
Provide policymaker training workshops that provide the knowledge and skills needed to find and use research evidence efficiently

13. PPD/CCNC database contains >800 systematic reviews about health system arrangements, plus review-derived products (
Summaries of systematic reviews (for more than half)
E.g., SUPPORT summaries that grade the evidence and highlight local applicability, equity and scaling up considerations
Overviews of systematic reviews
E.g., Lancet articles on human resources for health and on primary healthcare (see reference list)
Policy (or evidence) briefs
E.g., HEN/Observatory briefs for European ministers

14. Policymaker training workshops address: 1) defining and framing problems, 2) identifying and characterizing policy and programmatic options, 3) identifying implementation challenges and characterizing implementation strategies (and soon will address characterizing performance monitoring, reporting and management strategies)
Five-day version available through EXTRA
Two-day version offered in a number of settings in Africa and Latin America
One-day version offered at the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and at PAHO

15. Addressing Challenge 4c
Research isn’t easy to use
Challenge 4c
Policymakers lack mechanisms to prompt them to use research in policymaking
One option (among many) for addressing challenge 4c
Propose changes to cabinet submissions and program plans to prompt policy analysts to summarize whether and how research informed the definition of a policy problem, the characterization of policy/programmatic options to address the problem, and the proposed approach to implementation

16. Addressing Challenge 4d
Research isn’t easy to use
Challenge 4d
Policymakers lack fora where policy challenges can be discussed with researchers and stakeholders
One option (among many) for addressing challenge 4d
Plan deliberative dialogues at which pre-circulated evidence summaries serve as the starting point for off-the-record deliberations involving policymakers, stakeholders, researchers and others

17. Addressing Challenges in Supporting Research Use
Research isn’t valued as an information input [General climate for research use]
Research isn’t relevant [Production]
Research isn’t easy to use [Translation]
Research isn’t communicated effectively [Push]
Research isn’t available when policymakers need it and in a form that they can use [Facilitating pull]
Policymakers lack mechanisms to prompt them to use research in policymaking [Pull]
Policymakers lack fora where policy challenges can be worked through with key stakeholders [Exchange]

18. Some Innovative Strategies that are Being Developed and Evaluated
Producers / purveyors of research
Users of research
Push efforts
Producers / purveyors of research
Users of research
User-pull efforts
Producers / purveyors of research
Users of research
Knowledge-translation platforms
Integrated efforts
Producers / purveyors of research
One group of users of research
Exchange efforts

19. Some Innovative Strategies that are Being Developed and Evaluated (2)
Push efforts
Literature service drawing on the PPD/CCNC database (Canada, Brazil)*
Evidence briefs (HEN/Observatory, EVIPNet Africa, EVIPNet Asia/ Asia-Pacific Observatory, Canada)
Efforts to facilitate user-pull
PPD/CCNC database
Training workshops
Exchange efforts
Deliberative dialogues (EVIPNet, Canada)*
Integrated efforts
Knowledge-translation platforms (EVIPNet)*

20. References
Lavis JN, Davies HTO, Oxman A, Denis J-L, Golden-Biddle K, Ferlie E. Towards systematic reviews that inform healthcare management and policymaking. Journal of Health Services Research and Policy 2005; 10 (supplement 1): [contains the systematic review]
Lavis JN, Lomas J, Hamid M, Sewankambo N. Assessing country-level efforts to link research to action. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2006; 84(8): [contains the framework]

21. References (2)
Lewin S, Lavis JN, Oxman AD, Bastias G, Chopra M, Ciapponi A, Flottorp S, Garcia Marti S, Pantoja T, Rada G, Souza N, Treweek S, Wiysonge CS, Haines A. Supporting the delivery of cost-effective interventions in primary health-care systems in low-income and middle-income countries: An overview of systematic reviews. The Lancet 2008; 372: [An example of an overview that draws on the typology and contents of the PPD/CCNC database]