Good evening
My name is Unni Gopinathan and I’m a public health physician and health systems researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. I’m also a co-investigator on the SUPPORT-SYSTEMS project (https://www.fhi.no/en/cristin-projects/ongoing/support-systems/ ) that has initiated this deep-dive HIFA forum discussion. I would like to share some brief thoughts about what this 4-week HIFA discussion will inform, so you know the background.
One of the key outputs of this project is a systematic review, where the tentative research question currently is: How does civil society actors’ use of evidence contribute to inclusive and accountable decision-making for universal health coverage?
Our motivation for examining the relationship between evidence use and these two key concepts - inclusiveness and accountabillity - is that we think civil society participation can be an important mechanism for bringing local evidence - such as experiential knowledge on how health system works or evidence on the needs, values and preferences of healthcare users and other community members – into decision making processes. And perhaps also evidence that otherwise would not be considered or captured by conventional ways of informing health policy with evidence? Moreover, participation of civil society can also potentially contribute to transparency and a better-informed citizenry, which in turn can enable people to demand justification and hold governments accountable for policy choices.
But before we fix our research questions, we want to hear views from people active in civil society organisations, international organisations, policy making or other relevant actors about what you think civil society participation in health policy means and involves, the role of civil society in promoting the use of different kinds of evidence and examples of how this happens in practice. We would also be very interested in hearing whether our primary focus on ‘inclusiveness’ and ‘accountability’ miss other key values that civil society participation contributes to.
At the end of this four-week discussion we will produce a synthesis that will be made publicly available. This document will inform our project but we also hope it can inspire and be useful to those of you who are exploring similar questions or would like to in the future.
Finally, thanks to Tarry, Esha and Goran for sharing thoughts on the first question. I’d like to comment later this week but hope first that others will join this conversation.
Best wishes
Unni
HIFA profile: Unni Gopinathan is a Senior Scientist at Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norway. Unni is joint coordinator of the HIFA working group on SUPPORT-SYSTEMS: How can decision-making processes for health systems strengthening and universal health coverage be made more inclusive, responsive and accountable?
https://www.hifa.org/support/members/unni
https://www.hifa.org/projects/new-support-systems-how-can-decision-makin...
Email: Unni.Gopinathan AT fhi.no
