The burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the whole world. In some places – and in some sectors – it is being felt more acutely than others, but we are all in this together.
At the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, our priority is the health and well-being of all, and the Alliance Secretariat is working full-time to ensure that planned programming continues to the best degree possible. We have had to adapt our ways of working, and we understand that our colleagues and partners may be in a similar position.
- All staff are working from home, having implemented relevant business continuity plans.
- All in-person meetings, protocol development workshops and other events that were scheduled to take place before the end of May 2020 will now take place online to the extent possible.
- Our governance bodies are continuing to provide guidance and oversight on Secretariat activities. For example, on 23 March we held a virtual meeting of our Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee.
- All technical officers have conducted a mitigation exercise reviewing their relevant portfolios. We are liaising with grantees and partners to adapt our current programming, especially as our projects often involve policy-makers and other health systems actors who are currently involved in the pandemic response.
Additionally, the Alliance is working to adapt our own portfolio to support the global response to COVID-19. We are a strong supporter of evidence-informed policy-making, and in times of crisis this is even more imperative.
We have been working to support institutional capacity for rapid evidence review, including through our Embedding rapid reviews in health systems decision-making (ERA) programme, our historic support for Systematic Review Centres, and our support for the Global Evidence Synthesis Initiative (GESI). Our review centre in South Africa just published a study on Health workers’ perceptions and experiences of using mHealth technologies to deliver primary healthcare services, which may be relevant to new working arrangements in the current context.
Teams from the ERA platform in India and Georgia have already undertaken responsive rapid reviews. The India team already published one on the role of frontline health workers in COVID-19 prevention and control, and the Georgia team has published a paper on The COVID-19 epidemic in Georgia Projections and Policy Options.
In the longer term, we are also looking to contribute to the knowledge base about health systems responses to COVID-19 through an examination of relevant case studies. We invite ideas for further collaboration as we continue to respond to the challenges before us. We also ask that partners or collaborators who have any questions or concerns get in touch with their responsible officer at the Alliance.
For more information about the WHO's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, daily situation reports and actions you can take, please see the information page on the novel coronavirus.
Updated 31 March 2020: We have included further information and links to the projects we have supported, along with links to new resources as they are being published.