Public Health Evidence South Asia, Prasanna School of Public Health, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Madhav Nagar, Manipal, Karnataka 576104, India.
The George Institute for Global Health, 308, Third Floor, Elegance Tower, Plot No. 8, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi 110025, India.
Health Policy Plan. 2023 Apr 11;38(4):435-453. doi: 10.1093/heapol/czad008.
Evidence-informed policymaking integrates the best available evidence on programme outcomes to guide decisions at all stages of the policy process and its importance becomes more pronounced in resource-constrained settings. In this paper, we have reviewed the use of systematic review evidence in framing National Health Programme (NHP) guidelines in India. We searched official websites of the different NHPs, linked to the main website of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), in December 2020 and January 2021. NHP guideline documents with systematic review evidence were identified and information on the use of this evidence was extracted. We classified the identified systematic review evidence according to its use in the guideline documents and analysed the data to provide information on the different factors and patterns linked to the use of systematic review evidence in these documents. Systematic reviews were mostly visible in guideline documents addressing maternal and newborn health, communicable diseases and immunization. These systematic reviews were cited in the guidelines to justify the need for action, to justify recommendations for action and opportunities for local adaptation, and to highlight implementation challenges and justify implementation strategies. Guideline documents addressing implementation cited systematic reviews about the problems and policy options more often than citing systematic reviews about implementation. Systematic reviews were linked directly to support statements in few guideline documents, and sometimes the reviews were not appropriately cited. Most of the systematic reviews providing information on the nature and scale of the policy problem included Indian data. It was seen that since 2014, India has been increasingly using systematic review evidence for public health policymaking, particularly for some of its high-priority NHPs. This complements the increasing investment in research synthesis centres and procedures to support evidence-informed decision making, demonstrating the continued evolution of India's evidence policy system.
循证决策将关于方案结果的最佳现有证据纳入到政策过程的所有阶段的决策中，在资源有限的情况下，其重要性更加显著。本文回顾了在制定印度国家卫生计划（NHP）指南中使用系统评价证据的情况。我们于 2020 年 12 月和 2021 年 1 月在 MoHFW 主网站上搜索了不同 NHP 的官方网站。确定了包含系统评价证据的 NHP 指南文件，并提取了有关使用该证据的信息。我们根据指南文件中使用的证据对识别出的系统评价证据进行了分类，并对数据进行了分析，以提供有关这些文件中使用系统评价证据的不同因素和模式的信息。系统评价主要出现在针对母婴健康、传染病和免疫的指南文件中。这些系统评价被引用到指南中，以证明采取行动的必要性、为行动建议提供依据、为地方调整提供机会，并强调实施挑战和为实施策略提供依据。解决实施问题的指南文件比解决实施问题的指南文件更频繁地引用关于问题和政策选择的系统评价。系统评价直接与支持声明相关联的情况很少见，有时系统评价引用不当。为支持对政策问题的性质和规模的说明而提供信息的大多数系统评价都包含了印度的数据。可以看出，自 2014 年以来，印度越来越多地将系统评价证据用于公共卫生决策，特别是针对一些高优先级的 NHP。这补充了对研究综合中心和支持循证决策程序的投资增加，表明印度的循证政策系统在不断发展。
