Support Tools for evidence-informed health Policymaking

The ‘SUPPORT tools for evidence-informed health policymaking’ were recently published as a supplement in Health Research Policy and Systems. This open access publication provides a set of tools that can be used by those involved in finding and using research evidence to support evidence-informed health policymaking.

This series of articles was prepared as part of the SUPPORT project, which was supported by the European Commission’s 6th Framework INCO programme, contract 031939. The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, and the Milbank Memorial Fund funded a peer review meeting where an earlier version of the series was discussed.

The series addresses four broad areas: supporting evidence-informed policymaking; identifying needs for research evidence; finding and assessing research evidence; and, going from research evidence to decisions.  These tools incorporate the experience of EVIPNet  and other knowledge translation platforms. They are a fundamental set of tools for improving the standards of EVIPNet country teams. Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish translations of the tools will be available early in 2010.

The 18 themes are:
1.What is evidence-informed policymaking?
2.Improving how your organisation supports the use of research evidence to inform policymaking
3.Setting priorities for supporting evidence-informed policymaking
4.Using research evidence to clarify a problem
5.Using research evidence to frame options to address a problem
6.Using research evidence to address how an option will be implemented
7.Finding systematic reviews
8.Deciding how much confidence to place in a systematic review
9.Assessing the applicability of the findings of a systematic review
10.Taking equity into consideration when assessing the findings of a systematic review
11.Finding and using evidence about local conditions
12.Finding and using research evidence about resource use and costs
13.Preparing and using policy briefs to support evidence-informed policymaking
14.Organising and using policy dialogues to support evidence-informed policymaking
15.Engaging the public in evidence-informed policymaking
16.Using research evidence in balancing the pros and cons of policies
17.Dealing with insufficient research evidence
18.Planning monitoring and evaluation of policies

To download the articles: http://www.health-policy-systems.com/supplements/7/S1

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