Responding to evidence requests for policies and programmes

Overview

Implementing and scaling-up effective interventions to improve reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (RMNCH) is a challenge for many countries. There are many policy and systems factors at various levels of service provision that may act as a barrier to successful implementation. As countries continue to develop strategic responses there is potential to learn from the experiences and areas of innovation of other countries with similar challenges. Against this background it is important to consider the potential role for effective mechanisms that enable the systematic collation and synthesis of country data and experiences to inform policy-making in relation to RMNCH.

Evidence support on health policy and systems and on countries’ progress on RMNCH is already available through global initiatives such as the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (http://www.who.int/alliance-hpsr/en/), the Countdown to 2015 (http://www.countdown2015mnch.org) and the Global Research Network to Support the UN Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health. (http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/global_research_ network/en/index.html)

This document focuses on evidence response mechanisms, which are set up specifically to respond regularly to evidence-requests from policymakers; whether on demand or through longer term established interactions with policy ‘customers’ for the evidence. Based on the findings of a review of such mechanisms, this document outlines some of the steps needed, and issues that should be considered in the development of an evidence response mechanism for RMNCH in Asia and the Pacific.