EVIPNet Workshop Santiago de Chile 2011 - Policy Briefs & Deliberative Dialogues
A consensus was reached by the EVIPNet Americas Secretariat, country teams, and PAHO’s Advisory Committee on Health Research, to define specific skill sets needed for EVIPNet country teams to be effective. This allowed developing a skill building strategy based on the identified needs, so that specific skills related to EVIPNet activities became available in each team and to allow having sufficient trained team members to gain momentum and maintain a sustained development in the long run.11 In this way country teams would reflect on their needs with regards to the skill sets and identify areas that needed further development; the EVIPNET Americas Secretariat would seek means to allow for relevant capacity building activities to take place, working with strategic partners such as the SUPPORT Collaboration,5 the Cochrane Collaboration (especially the Ibero-American and Canadian Cochrane Centres and Networks),12 the Alliance for Health Policy & Systems Research (AHPSR),6 the McMaster Health Forum,13 the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research,14 and WHO Collaborating Centers,15 seeking efficiencies and promoting regional and sub-regional networks and activities. Following on the advice of PAHO’s ACHR,10 and in lines with the elements that were being considered in the development of regional and global policies on research for health,16 the EVIPNet Americas Secretariat promoted a “train the trainers” approach that was implemented with support from the McMaster Health Forum and the SUPPORT Collaboration. This was done in parallel to the work being carried out with participating countries and allowed developing sustainable regional capacities by establishing a cadre of experts, fluent in different and relevant languages needed to support the growth of EVIPNet Americas, and its expansion throughout the Americas. EVIPNet teams were eager to have tangible outputs, and because of this two innovative tools were soon to be implemented with the teams: policy briefs and deliberative dialogues. Policy briefs represent an innovative, tested, and well-evaluated tool adopted by EVIPNet teams around the globe.17 Policy briefs are concise documents that summarize the implications of different policy options for a priority policy issue. Their development involves using evidence and information obtained through adequate research methods to address policy options according to the nature of the various perspectives included under each option; each option addresses questions that a policy maker would find relevant. A policy brief will typically single out the underlying problems, the options to address the problem, key implementation considerations, and elements offering a system based approach suitable for a policy maker.
11 EVIPNet Americas Secretariat. Proposal for a EVIPNet Skills Building Strategy. Draft Manuscript. 2009. http://www.paho.org/ researchportal 12 http://www.cochrane.org/ 13 http://www.mcmasterhealthforum.org/ 14 http://www.ccghr.ca/default.cfm?content=si7&lang=e&subnav=si7 15 http://regional.bvsalud.org/whocc/ 16 http://bit.ly/ResearchPolicy 17 Oxman AD, Yohannes AM, Rottingen JA. Options for improving malaria treatment: Introduction. Int J Technol Assess Health Care 2010;26:228-229. http://www.who.int/rpc/evipnet/policybriefs/en/index.html
5