There is broad support for using evidence to strengthen health systems and achieve universal health coverage (UHC). Including the knowledge and perspectives of civil society actors in these policy processes are seen as important. However, the types of knowledge that civil society actors bring to health policy processes, and how that knowledge is used by policy actors, has received relatively little attention.
The participation of civil society actors in health policy processes is also instrumental to achieving inclusiveness and accountability—two vital values for governing health systems.
Through a qualitative evidence synthesis and empirical studies of vaccine and primary health care policymaking in Ghana and Kenya, the SUPPORT-SYSTEMS* project aims to generate insights on how the use of knowledge from civil society can contribute to more inclusive and accountable decision-making processes for strengthening health systems and achieving UHC. This presentation will share early findings from the qualitative evidence synthesis and the empirical studies. It will also share how the project involves stakeholders to shape its research direction.
Short biographies
Unni Gopinathan is senior scientist in the Centre for Epidemic Interventions Research and Cluster for Global Health at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
Simon Lewin is a health policy and systems researcher and a professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at NTNU.
They are co-Principal investigators of SUPPORT-SYSTEMS, together with co-investigators from the University of Ghana and the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya.
Supporting inclusive and accountable health systems decisions in Ghana and Kenya for universal health coverage (SUPPORT-SYSTEMS) is a 3-year project funded by the Research Council of Norway (https://www.fhi.no/prosjekter/support-systems/)
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What are SHEtalks
SHEtalks are a serial of informal research seminars held at Center for Sustainable Healthcare Education, University of Oslo. SHEtalks are research lunch lectures. The 2024 program was put together by researcher Gabriela Saldanha. Seminars take place at Thursdays at noon (GTM+1) unless otherwise specified. They may be delivered and attended in person or via zoom.
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