Capacity strengthening

The Alliance strengthens capacity in the field of HPSR through a combination of: targeted financing for research; support to the creation of a decision-making architecture where research is valued and used; teaching and learning tools; and mentorship programmes.

Our capacity strengthening activities span the system-wide, institutional and individual levels and work across both evidence generation and use.

Why is this an important issue?

HPSR is context specific. When done well, it is aligned with, and draws on, the evidence needs and technical expertise of policy-makers and practitioners at national and sub-national levels in LMICs.

The World Report on Health Policy and Systems Research, in 2017, provided a comprehensive overview of the field of HPSR, including where capacity deficits lie. In LMICs, priority setting is often based around particular areas of health rather than at the systems-level, and biomedical and clinical research dominate when it comes to evidence generation – local capacity to conduct HPSR remains under-developed. Outsiders, such as Northern researchers and funders, often set research agendas.

Furthermore, decision-makers can lack the capacity to both identify when HPSR is required and to solicit the appropriate evidence gathering when they experience policy challenges.

 

Key initiatives

Institutional capacity strengthening

  • Building Institutional Capacity for HPSR (BIRD)
  • Heightening Institutional Capacity for Government use of Health Research (HIGH-Res)
  • Nodal Institutes
  • Embedding rapid reviews in health systems decision-making (ERA)
  • Implementation Research Platform

Individual-level capacity strengthening


Future commitment

The Alliance will continue to work at system, institutional and individual levels to build capacity for local priority setting, HPSR skills building and the development of new knowledge led by researchers from and embedded in the contexts that are being studied.