article · International Journal of Health Policy and Management
Strengthening the link between scientific evidence and healthcare policy is an ongoing global priority. In Ebonyi State, Nigeria, a newly established Health Policy Advisory Committee was implemented within the existing government system to serve as a knowledge translation platform. To build the committee's capacity, members participated in targeted training using established evidence-to-policy support tools alongside a three-month executive mentorship programme on health systems and knowledge translation. The initiative produced a policy brief focused on improving the performance of the state's free maternal and child healthcare programme, followed by a multi-stakeholder dialogue. The intervention led to demonstrable improvements in members' understanding of evidence-informed policy-making, reduced mistrust between researchers and government officials, and heightened awareness within the Ministry of Health regarding the committee's strategic value. Overall, the mechanism proved viable for bridging the divide between academic research and public health decision-making.
Public health programmes often underperform when decision-makers and academic researchers operate in isolation. By establishing and training an advisory committee directly within a state government structure, this initiative created a sustainable channel for dialogue. The findings demonstrate that structured capacity building can remove long-standing mistrust between scientists and officials, ultimately supporting more effective, evidence-grounded health policies and programmes such as maternal and child healthcare initiatives.
The abstract does not indicate a direct commercial application or market pathway, as the work focuses on public sector institutional governance and capacity building. However, the operational model and training frameworks represent applied, real-world tools that health ministries, non-governmental organisations, and public health consulting entities can adopt to design, facilitate, and manage knowledge translation platforms within governmental health systems.
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BACKGROUND: In recent times, there has been a growing demand internationally for health policies to be based on reliable research evidence. Consequently, there is a need to strengthen institutions and mechanisms that can promote interactions among researchers, policy-makers and other stakeholders who can influence the uptake of research findings. The Health Policy Advisory Committee (HPAC) is one of such mechanisms that can serve as an excellent forum for the interaction of policy-makers and researchers. Therefore, the need to have a long term mechanism that allows for periodic interactions between researchers and policy-makers within the existing government system necessitated our implementation of a newly established HPAC in Ebonyi State Nigeria, as a Knowledge Translation (KT) platform. The key study objective was to enhance the capacity of the HPAC and equip its members with the skills/competence required for the committee to effectively promote evidence informed policy-making and function as a KT platform. METHODS: A series of capacity building programmes and KT activities were undertaken including: i) Capacity building of the HPAC using Evidence-to-Policy Network (EVIPNet) SUPPORT tools; ii) Capacity enhancement mentorship programme of the HPAC through a three-month executive training programme on health policy/health systems and KT in Ebonyi State University Abakaliki; iii) Production of a policy brief on strategies to improve the performance of the Government's Free Maternal and Child Health Care Programme in Ebonyi State Nigeria; and iv) Hosting of a multi-stakeholders policy dialogue based on the produced policy brief on the Government's Free Maternal and Child Health Care Programme. RESULTS: The study findings indicated a noteworthy improvement in knowledge of evidence-to-policy link among the HPAC members; the elimination of mutual mistrust between policy-makers and researchers; and an increase in the awareness of importance of HPAC in the Ministry of Health (MoH). CONCLUSION: Findings from this study suggest that a HPAC can function as a KT platform and can introduce a new dimension towards facilitating evidence-to-policy link into the operation of the MoH, and can serve as an excellent platform to bridge the gap between research and policy.
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DOI: 10.15171/ijhpm.2015.21
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