Workshop for systematic review centres
The Alliance HPSR has awarded grants to four institutions in low and middle income countries to establish centres for systematic review of health policy and systems research. Three of the grants will help establish Centres for systematic review of high priority themes: health workforce, health financing and the role of the non-state sector in health. The fourth Centre will be a Methodology centre, responsible for the development and dissemination of systematic review methodologies appropriate to health systems research in low and middle income countries.
Last April, a training workshop was organised by the Alliance HPSR in the WHO Geneva to support these four institutions.
The objectives of the workshop were the following:
- To equip the teams with basic skills in conducting systematic reviews in the health policy and systems research filed
- To help each team get started on its first systematic review
- To help participants finalize their worksplan for the first year
- To identify critical points at which further external support may be required and how best to provide this support
For the first year the four centres will be focusing on the following questions:
1-What strategies are effective in scaling up basic training of health workers?
- Institute of Public Health, Makerere University, Uganda
- The Centre for Systematic Reviews on Human Resources for Health
2-Which strategies are effective in increasing health insurance coverage, particularly for rural and poor populations?
3-What are the effects of franchising on quality of and access to health care services?
4-What are the effects of interventions to influence health worker migration?
These teams are supported by three northern collaborating partners including the EPOC Satellite at the Norwegian Knowledge Center for the Health Sevices, Oslo, the EPPI-Centre at the Institution of Education in London and the Effective Health Care Research Programme Consortium at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in Liverpool.