Support Team - Giving communities a voice with research evidence

The relevance of health research for society is increasingly becoming an issue. Governments, funding agencies and civil society demand from researchers more accountability and more direct inputs into health policy development. Research institutes can respond to these needs by performing participatory research, making research accessible to people, engaging in dialogue with communities, and translating the research outcomes into clear policy advice for governments.

In the Support to Public Health Institutes Programme (SPHIP), several projects have developed innovative approaches in enhancing relevance of research for the people. The SPEED project in Uganda has brought the Makerere School of Public Health together with the Uganda National Patient and Client Organisation in a lobby to improve the control of malaria through indoor residual spraying. Evidence from research is used to influence the national implementation of malaria control.[1] The lobby even resulted in a Presidential decision to increase the government budget for malaria control. The SHARE project in Bangladesh helped to make health information data available for the general public though easy-to-understand dashboards.[2] This allows community organisations to critically monitor the performance of the health services, even as detailed in specific health facilities. Community organisations can participate in coordination meetings in districts, like for example Jessore.[3] In Myanmar the NCD transition project organised advocacy meetings[4] and engages community groups of older people in the programme and establishes dialogue between these groups and local health centres to work jointly on new activities to control non-communicable diseases.

All eight projects in the SPHIP programme develop policy briefs, have websites and organise public meetings to discuss the findings of research with policy makers and civil society. The dialogue provides new insights for researchers. Knowledge translation is a new area of work and requires clear, concise and understandable formulation of conclusions and recommendations coming from research. Collaboration with activist community groups requires from researchers to show clearly implication of the conclusions (and their limitations). Collaboration with politicians requires from researchers to think in direct cost-effective benefits based on research.

The engagement of researchers with communities and direct assistance in giving a voice to community groups is a new experience and a successful way to create mutual understanding between the two separate worlds. It helps to show better how health research serves the society on the short and long term.

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[1] http://speed.musph.ac.ug/indoor-residual-spraying-a-neglected-solution-…

[2] http://103.247.238.81/webportal/pages/index.php

[3] http://www.share4health.com/cool_timeline/monthly-coordination-meeting-…

[4] http://sphcmyanmar.org/advocacy-meetings-organized-on-addressing-non-co…