Office of the Regional Director/Public Health coordinator, WHO Africa Regional Office, Harare, Zimbabwe; Centre for Health Professions Education/Professor, North-West University-Potchefstroom Campus, Potchefstroom, South Africa.
East Central and Southern Africa Health Community/Technical officer, East African Community, Arusha, Tanzania.
Value Health Reg Issues. 2024 Jan;39:24-30. doi: 10.1016/j.vhri.2023.10.002. Epub 2023 Nov 15.
Empirical data on the impact of research-to-policy interventions are scant, with the few attempts mainly focusing on ensuring policymakers' timely access to evidence and evidence-informed dialogs.
This article reflects on how the Thanzi Programme cultivates an approach of research-to-policy engagement in health economics. The program is structured around 3 interrelated pillars comprising research evidence generation, capacity and capability building, and research-and-policy engagement. Each pillar is described and examples from the Thanzi Programme are given, including illustrating how each pillar informs the other. Limitations and challenges of the approach are discussed, with examples of a way forward.
This program supports health system strengthening through addressing gaps identified by program partners. This includes providing health economics training and research and strengthened partnerships between in-country researchers and health policymakers, as well as between national and international researchers. Platforms bringing together researchers and policymakers to shape the research agenda, disseminate evidence, and foster an evidence-based dialog are institutionalized at country and regional levels. Health Economics and Policy Units have been established, which sit between the Ministries of Health and Universities, to augment policymakers and health economics researchers' engagements on priority health policy matters and determine researchable policy questions. The establishment of the Health Economics Community of Practice as a substantive expert committee under the East Central and Southern Africa Health Community bolsters the contribution of health economics evidence in policy processes at the regional level.
The Thanzi Programme is an example of how a research-and-policy partnership framework is being used to support evidence-informed health resource allocation decisions in Africa. It uses a combination of high-quality multidisciplinary research, sustained research and policymakers' engagement and capacity strengthening to use research evidence to guide and support policy makers more effectively.
关于研究向政策干预的影响的实证数据很少，少数尝试主要集中在确保决策者能够及时获得证据和基于证据的对话上。
本文反思了 Thanzi 计划如何培养健康经济学中研究与政策参与的方法。该计划围绕着 3 个相互关联的支柱构建，包括研究证据的产生、能力建设和研究与政策的参与。每个支柱都进行了描述，并给出了 Thanzi 计划的例子，包括说明每个支柱如何相互影响。讨论了该方法的局限性和挑战，并举例说明了前进的方向。
该计划通过解决项目合作伙伴确定的差距来支持加强卫生系统。这包括提供健康经济学培训和研究，并加强国内研究人员与卫生政策制定者之间，以及国家和国际研究人员之间的伙伴关系。将研究人员和政策制定者聚集在一起的平台，用于制定研究议程、传播证据并促进循证对话，在国家和区域层面制度化。在卫生部和大学之间设立了卫生经济学和政策股，以增加政策制定者和卫生经济学研究人员在优先卫生政策问题上的参与，并确定可研究的政策问题。作为东中非和南部非洲卫生共同体下属的实质性专家委员会设立了卫生经济学实践社区，加强了在区域一级政策制定过程中健康经济学证据的贡献。
Thanzi 计划是一个范例，说明如何利用研究与政策伙伴关系框架来支持非洲的循证卫生资源分配决策。它结合了高质量的多学科研究、持续的研究和政策制定者的参与以及能力建设，以利用研究证据更有效地指导和支持政策制定者。
