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Project

Strengthening partnerships and collaborative learning in social systems to improve evidence-informed policies in LMICs
 

Project ID
109765
Total Funding
CAD 2,775,480.00
IDRC Officer
Sana Naffa
Project Status
Completed
End Date
Duration
20 months

Programs and partnerships

Lead institution(s)

Summary

The partnership for evidence and equity in responsive social systems (PEERSS) aims to advance evidence-informed policymaking, primarily in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), to address social challenges, with a focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goals.Read more

The partnership for evidence and equity in responsive social systems (PEERSS) aims to advance evidence-informed policymaking, primarily in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), to address social challenges, with a focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Partners draw on a range of approaches and tools, including systematic reviews, rapid syntheses of evidence, stakeholder dialogues, and citizen panels, to provide decision-makers with the evidence they need to address key priorities.

A key objective of this project is to support and strengthen collaborative learning among the country teams in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. Four learning and collaboration hubs based in Brazil, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Lebanon will provide a structured approach to learning and collaboration. This model will bring together country teams to adopt mutual reflection and learning that combines theoretical and empirical research with current conditions and practical experience to influence evidence-informed policies in the various social systems within these countries.

The project will identify, match, and document technical support and mentorship requirements within the partnership; support the development of a learning strategy, knowledge translation, and critical synthesis of learning; identify, create, and engage opportunities for technical collaboration; and produce ‘stories of change’ that demonstrate specific policy/program changes related to the promotion of evidence-based policymaking. Expected results include improved research-to-policy connections, networks, and policy-change tools.

Research outputs

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Article
Language:

English

Summary

Evidence briefs for policy (EBP) draw on best-available data and research evidence (e.g., systematic reviews) to help clarify policy problems, frame options for addressing them, and identify implementation considerations for policymakers in a given context. An increasing number of governments, non-governmental organizations and research groups have been developing EBP on a wide variety of topics. However, the reporting characteristics of EBP vary across organizations due to a lack of internationally accepted standard reporting guidelines. This project aims to develop a STandard reporting guideline of Evidence briefs for Policy (STEP), which will encompass a reporting checklist and a STEP statement and a user manual.

Author(s)
Yu, Xuan
Article
Language:

English

Summary

While calls for institutionalization of evidence-informed policy-making (EIP) have become stronger in recent years, there is a paucity of methods that governments and organizational knowledge brokers can use to sustain and integrate EIP as part of mainstream health policy-making. The objective of this paper was to conduct a knowledge synthesis of the published and grey literatures to develop a theoretical framework with the key features of EIP institutionalization.

Author(s)
Kuchenmüller, Tanja
Paper
Language:

English

Summary

The EPPI Centre, alongside other small research units, collaborated with national and international organisations at the research-policy interface to incubate, spread and embed new ways of working with evidence and policy. Sustainable change arising from research-policy interactions was less about uptake and embedding of innovations, but more about co-developing and tailoring innovations with organisations to suit their missions and structures for creating new knowledge or using knowledge for decisions. Both spreading and embedding innovation relied on mutual learning that both accommodated and challenged established assumptions and values of collaborating organisations as they adapted to closer ways of working. The incubation, spread and embedding of innovations have been iterative, with new ways of working inspiring further innovation as they spread and embedded. Institutionalising evidence for policy required change in both institutions generating evidence and institutions developing policy.

Author(s)
Oliver, Sandy
Paper
Language:

English

Summary

Approaches for engaging stakeholders with policy decisions or research tend to favour either generalisable evidence from research or context-specific evidence, including local data and tacit knowledge. Some international development and humanitarian organisations are leading the way with practice and guidance for combining generalisable and context-specific evidence for local action around the world. Some local non-governmental organisations who base their learning on local evidence alone acknowledge their lack of attention to generalisable evidence as a shortcoming. Listening to both groups has resulted in a publicly available toolkit for bringing together generalisable evidence and local knowledge. CEDIL’s Methods Working Paper 4, ‘Engaging Stakeholders with Evidence and Uncertainty: Developing a Toolkit’, offers a new framework that helps choose appropriate stakeholder engagement methods while conducting research and supporting decision-making. The framework provides the foundation for a toolkit that distinguishes major differences in stakeholder engagement, illustrates pathways for choosing appropriate methods for stakeholder engagement, signposts evidence and practical tools to support stakeholder engagement, and guidance for identifying and understanding stakeholders and their relationships.

Author(s)
Oliver, Sandy
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About the partnership

Partnership(s)

Partnership for Evidence and Equity in Responsive Social Systems

The Partnership for Evidence and Equity in Responsive Social Systems (PEERSS) facilitates the use of evidence by policymakers and stakeholders to clarify priority development problems and causes, frame options to address them, and identify implementation considerations in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia.