Development of a knowledge broker group to support evidence-informed policy: lessons learned from Myanmar

Abstract Background Globally, policy-makers face challenges to using evidence in health decision-making, particularly lack of interaction between research and policy. Knowledge-brokering mechanisms can fill research–policy gaps and facilitate evidence-informed policy-making. In Myanmar, the need to promote evidence-informed policy is significant, and thus a mechanism was set up for this purpose. This paper discusses lessons learned from the development of the Knowledge Broker Group–Myanmar (KBG-M), supported by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Applied Mental Health Research Group (JHU) and Community Partners International (CPI). Methods Sixteen stakeholders were interviewed to explore challenges in formulating evidence-informed policy. Two workshops were held: the first to further understand the needs of policy-makers and discuss knowledge-brokering approaches, and the second to co-create the KBG-M structure and process. The KBG-M was then envisioned as an independent body, with former officials of the Ministry of Health and Sports (MoHS) and representatives from the nongovernmental sector actively engaging in the health sector, with an official collaboration with the MoHS. Results A development task force that served as an advisory committee was established. Then, steps were taken to establish the KBG-M and obtain official recognition from the MoHS. Finally, when the technical agreement with the MoHS was nearly complete, the process stopped because of the military coup on 1 February 2021, and is now on hold indefinitely. Conclusions Learning from this process may be helpful for future or current knowledge-brokering efforts, particularly in fragile, conflict-affected settings. Experienced and committed advisory committee members enhanced stakeholder relationships. Responsive coordination mechanisms allowed for adjustments to a changing bureaucratic landscape. Coordination with similar initiatives avoided overlap and identified areas needing technical support. Recommendations to continue the work of the KBG-M itself or similar platforms include the following: increase resilience to contextual changes by ensuring diverse partnerships, maintain advisory committee members experienced and influential in the policy-making process, ensure strong organizational and funding support for effective functioning and sustainability, have budget and timeline flexibility to allow sufficient time and resources for establishment, organize ongoing needs assessments to identify areas needing technical support and to develop responsive corrective approaches, and conduct information sharing and collaboration between stakeholders to ensure alignment.

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Developing Virtual Communities to Support Drug Policy Knowledge Exchange

E-Health Communities and Online Self-Help Groups ◽

10.4018/978-1-60960-866-8.ch017 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 279-302

Author(s):

Mowafa Househ ◽

Andre W. Kushniruk ◽

Malcolm Maclure ◽

Bruce Carleton ◽

Denise Cloutier-Fisher

Keyword(s):

Drug Policy ◽

Policy Making ◽

Virtual Communities ◽

Knowledge Exchange ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Policy Making Process ◽

Action Case

Within Canada, there is a growing need in the area of drug policy to develop virtual communities to facilitate knowledge exchange between academics and policy-makers. Such collaborations are regarded as a way to make research relevant by influencing the policy-making process. This chapter presents an action case study of three drug policy groups participating in various virtual knowledge exchange activities. The experiences and lessons learned by each group participating in this study are provided. Recommendations and solutions to conduct successful virtual knowledge exchange meetings based on the findings of this research are also provided.

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Why do we need for timeliness of research in decision-making?

European Journal of Public Health ◽

10.1093/eurpub/ckz185.216 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 29 (Supplement_4) ◽

Author(s):

J de Jong ◽

J Hansen ◽

P Groenewegen

Keyword(s):

Policy Process ◽

Policy Making ◽

Research Evidence ◽

Research Policy ◽

Research Process ◽

Evidence Based ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Evidence Based Policy ◽

Research And Policy ◽

Support Evidence

Abstract Background Compared to the policy process, the research process is slow. As a result, research evidence is not always available when needed in the policy process. These differences in timelines between research and policy hinder the use of research evidence in the policy process. In order to support evidence-based policy making, timeliness of research is important. Methods Examples are provided, e.g. where research was on time to be included in the policy process and where research was too late to be included in it. These examples are described and analysed to provide for recommendations on how to better align both processes. Results It is shown that in order to create timeliness of research, policy makers and researchers should talk on a regular basis. This increases the chance that results from the research are included in policy making. Conclusions Timeliness of research is important for evidence-based policy making. In order to create timeliness of research, interaction between researchers and policy makers is important.

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The Politicization of Evidence-based Policies

Bridging the Gaps ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198834557.003.0009 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 127-145

Author(s):

Kristof Tamas

Keyword(s):

Policy Making ◽

Research Policy ◽

Evidence Based ◽

Policy Dialogue ◽

Liberal Democracies ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Swedish Experience ◽

Policy Cultures ◽

Research And Policy

The Swedish experience of government committees offers interesting examples of the diversity of efforts to make research relevant for policy-making. The Swedish case is also an illustration of how the research–policy dialogue may suffer from the gap between different research and policy ‘cultures’. These need to be bridged through dialogue and exchange in order to avoid a demise in the relationships between researchers and policy-makers. The aim of this chapter is to draw on the Swedish example with government committees to discuss critically the potential opportunities, benefits, and pitfalls when attempting to bridge the gap between research and policy-making. The chapter will also cast some new light on the claim that the research–policy nexus in liberal democracies is characterized by ‘the simultaneous scientification of politics and the politicization of science’.

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Prioritizing Strategic Factors of Creative Tourism Industry in Iran by Analytic Network Process (ANP)

Event Management ◽

10.3727/152599519x15506259855977 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 24 (5) ◽

pp. 553-565

Author(s):

Reza Kiani Mavi ◽

Hamed Gheibdoust ◽

Ahmad A. Khanfar

Keyword(s):

Policy Making ◽

Analytic Network Process ◽

Influential Factors ◽

Tourism Industry ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Business Support ◽

Network Process ◽

Strategic Factors ◽

Strategic Policy ◽

Strategic Policies

Nowadays, it is obvious that creative tourism industry has become very essential for countries and societies; therefore, governments work on constituting policies in order to develop this industry. To be successful in improving creative tourism industry, governments should identify the influential factors and focus on ones that are more important rather than investing a bit on many different factors. Because of the interrelations among factors, this research is aiming to prioritize factors that influence strategic policies of creative tourism industry in Iran using analytic network process (ANP). Data were collected during the period of May 2017 to February 2018. Participants in this research are 13 tourism experts with more than 10 years' experience in the field. Results show that the most influential criterion is "business support" and the most influential subcriterion is "supporting midsize businesses." This study helps policy makers to improve creative tourism by emphasizing on those factors that have high priority from the viewpoint of strategic policy-making.

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Sentencing Policy as a Force for Social Cohesion

10.1093/oso/9780198718895.003.0003 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Ralph Henham

Keyword(s):

Social Cohesion ◽

Policy Making ◽

Social Values ◽

Social Reality ◽

Social Forces ◽

Top Down ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Normative Approach ◽

The Social ◽

Sentencing Policy

This chapter sets out the case for adopting a normative approach to conceptualizing the social reality of sentencing. It argues that policy-makers need to comprehend how sentencing is implicated in realizing state values and take greater account of the social forces that diminish the moral credibility of state sponsored punishment. The chapter reflects on the problems of relating social values to legal processes such as sentencing and argues that crude notions of ‘top down’ or ‘bottom up’ approaches to policy-making should be replaced by a process of contextualized policy-making. Finally, the chapter stresses the need for sentencing policy to reflect those moral attachments that bind citizens together in a relational or communitarian sense. It concludes by exploring these assertions in the light of the sentencing approach taken by the courts following the English riots of 2011.

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Lessons learned from a search for common ground

Phi Delta Kappan ◽

10.1177/0031721721992562 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 102 (5) ◽

pp. 29-32

Author(s):

Rick Hess ◽

Pedro Noguera

Keyword(s):

School Choice ◽

Common Ground ◽

Social And Emotional Learning ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Teachers College ◽

Social And Emotional ◽

Education Leaders ◽

K 12 ◽

Common Understanding

In 2020, Rick Hess and Pedro Noguera engaged in a long-running correspondence that tackled many of the biggest questions in education — including topics like school choice, equity and diversity, testing, privatization, the achievement gap, social and emotional learning, and civics. They sought to unpack their disagreements, better understand one another’s perspectives, and seek places of agreement or points of common understanding. Their correspondence appears in their book, A Search for Common Ground: Conversations About the Toughest Questions in K-12 Education (Teachers College Press, 2021). In this article, they reflect on the exercise, what they learned from it, and what lessons it might offer to educators, education leaders, researchers, and policy makers.

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Science Informed Policies for Managing Water

Hydrology ◽

10.3390/hydrology8020066 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 66

Author(s):

Daniel P. Loucks

Keyword(s):

Water Management ◽

Water Resource ◽

Policy Making ◽

Water Resource Management ◽

Information Policy ◽

Management Policy ◽

Multiple Impacts ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Science Policy Interface ◽

Management Policies

Water resource management policies impact how water supplies are protected, collected, stored, treated, distributed, and allocated among multiple users and purposes. Water resource policies influence the decisions made regarding the siting, design, and operation of infrastructure needed to achieve the underlying goals of these policies. Water management policies vary by region depending on particular hydrologic, economic, environmental, and social conditions, but in all cases they will have multiple impacts affecting these conditions. Science can provide estimates of various economic, ecologic, environmental, and even social impacts of alternative policies, impacts that determine how effective any particular policy may be. These impact estimates can be used to compare and evaluate alternative policies in the search for identifying the best ones to implement. Among all scientists providing inputs to policy making processes are analysts who develop and apply models that provide these estimated impacts and, possibly, their probabilities of occurrence. However, just producing them is not a guarantee that they will be considered by policy makers. This paper reviews various aspects of the science-policy interface and factors that can influence what information policy makers need from scientists. This paper suggests some ways scientists and analysts can contribute to and inform those making water management policy decisions. Brief descriptions of some water management policy making examples illustrate some successes and failures of science informing and influencing policy.

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Corruption in Construction Projects: Bibliometric Analysis of Global Research

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13084400 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (8) ◽

pp. 4400

Author(s):

Zhao Zhai ◽

Ming Shan ◽

Amos Darko ◽

Albert P. C. Chan

Keyword(s):

Construction Projects ◽

Research Policy ◽

Mitigation Strategies ◽

Future Research ◽

Policy And Practice ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Research Areas ◽

Body Of Knowledge ◽

Emerging Trends ◽

Global Research

Corruption has been identified as a major problem in construction projects. It can jeopardize the success of these projects. Consequently, corruption has garnered significant attention in the construction industry over the past two decades, and several studies on corruption in construction projects (CICP) have been conducted. Previous efforts to analyze and review this body of knowledge have been manual, qualitative and subjective, thus prone to bias and limited in the number of reviewed studies. There remains a lack of inclusive, quantitative, objective and computational analysis of global CICP research to inform future research, policy and practice. This study aims to address this lack by providing the first inclusive bibliometric study exploring the state-of-the-art of global CICP research. To this end, a quantitative and objective technique aided by CiteSpace was used to systematically and computationally analyze a large corpus of 542 studies retrieved from the Web of Science and published from 2000 to 2020. The findings revealed major and influential CICP research journals, persons, institutions, countries, references and areas of focus, as well as revealing how these interact with each other in research networks. This study contributes to the in-depth understanding of global research on CICP. By highlighting the principal research areas, gaps, emerging trends and directions, as well as patterns in CICP research, the findings could help researchers, practitioners and policy makers position their future CICP research and/or mitigation strategies.

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Cancer care coordination: building a platform for the development of care coordinator roles and ongoing evaluation

Australian Journal of Primary Health ◽

10.1071/py13037 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 157 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Louise Freijser ◽

Lucio Naccarella ◽

Rosemary McKenzie ◽

Meinir Krishnasamy

Keyword(s):

Cancer Care ◽

Research Policy ◽

Contextual Influences ◽

Policy And Practice ◽

Care Coordinator ◽

Program Logic ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Patient Advocates ◽

The Individual ◽

Ongoing Evaluation

Continuity of care is integral to the quality and safety of care provided to people with cancer and their carers. Further evidence is required to examine the contribution Nurse Cancer Care Coordinator (NCCC) roles make in improving the continuity. The aim of the present study was to clarify the assumptions underpinning the NCCC roles and provide a basis for ongoing evaluation. The project comprised a literature review and a qualitative study to develop program logic. The participants who were purposively sampled included policy makers, practitioners, patient advocates, and researchers. Both the literature and participant reports found that NCCC roles are diverse and responsive to contextual influences to coordinate care at the individual (patient), organisational, and systems levels. The application of the program logic for the development of NCCC roles was explored. The conceptualisation of NCCC roles was also examined in relation to Boundary Spanning and Relational Coordination theory. Further research is required to examine how NCCCs contribute to improving equity, safety, quality and coordination of care. The project has implications for research, policy and practice, and makes explicit existing assumptions to provide a platform for further development and evaluation of these roles.

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Hazardous Substances in Electronics: The Effects of European Union Risk Regulation on China

European Journal of Risk Regulation ◽

10.1017/s1867299x00002415 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 3 (4) ◽

pp. 477-487 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Katja Biedenkopf

Keyword(s):

European Union ◽

Chinese Economy ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Hazardous Substances ◽

Risk Regulation ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Global Competitiveness ◽

Legal Structure ◽

Chinese Policy ◽

The Eu

This article argues that European Union (EU) risk regulation of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) was both a trigger and formative factor in the development of similar Chinese regulation. The attractiveness and global interdependence of the EU market in EEE impelled a response from Chinese policy-makers. Fostering the domestic industry's global competitiveness was one of the driving factors behind Chinese substance restriction regulation. Additionally, symbolic emulation and growing domestic environmental problems related to waste EEE infl uenced the Chinese policy agenda. Chinese substance restriction rules are not, however, a mere copy of EU regulation. The limited domestic capacity of the Chinese economy, administration, and legal structure to adopt policies similar to those of the EU explains, to a large extent, the emergence and partial persistence of differences between EU and Chinese risk regulation. In the course of the implementation and evaluation of Chinese substance restriction regulation, lessons learned from the EU’s experience increasingly contributed to shaping the policy, leading to growing convergence.

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