18 May 2022, Cairo - The Regional Office has held the second virtual meeting of the Regional Network of Institutions for Evidence and Data to Policy (NEDtP) to share experiences and update the Network on recent initiatives to promote evidence-informed policy-making in the Region.
In March 2021, at the first meeting of the NEDtP, participants from regional and global institutions discussed plans, initiatives and potential collaboration for developing the Network and enhancing the use of evidence and data to policy at national and regional levels. Subsequently, several capacity-building programmes were undertaken by WHO to enhance the capacity to use evidence in policy-making for health in the Region.
Important steps have since been taken towards meeting the objectives of the regional action plan for the implementation of the framework to improve national institutional capacity for use of evidence in health policy-making in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. Besides a wider dissemination of the plan through the translation into more national languages of the Region, the Network has been expanded and now has more than 30 member institutions from 21 countries in the Region.
The second meeting of the NEDtP was inaugurated by Dr Arash Rashidian, Director of Science, Information and Dissemination at the WHO Regional Office, who explained WHO’s strategy and its recent initiatives to enhance the capacity of evidence-informed policy-making in the Region. Representatives from the member institutions, including the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and Institute for Future Studies in Health at Kerman University in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Health Service Academy of Khyber Medical University in Pakistan and the Faculty of Medicine of Aden University in Yemen, shared experiences, described progress made so far and provided useful recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of the Network. Each member institution presented its experience in the use of evidence to inform policies, initiatives to improve national capacity to generate data and evidence, capacity-building activities and lessons learnt. Plans for the future were also discussed, together with possible areas for cooperation.
Representatives of NEDtP-supporting institutions, including Dr John Lavis, Professor of Evidence and Impact, McMaster University, Canada, Dr Lubna Al Ansari, Professor of Family and Community Medicine, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia, Dr Mark Leys, Coordinator of the Organization Policy and Inequalities in Health Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium and Dr Simon Lewin, Professor of Health Management and Health Systems, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, made important suggestions in relation to collaboration with global partners and the need to monitor the impact of the different activities.
Participants expressed strong interest in continuing the work of the NEDtP and, on the basis of their experiences, formulated specific support requests to WHO.
Throughout the meeting, the participants emphasized the importance of expanding the Network to include more institutions from the Region through advocacy and publicizing its role. They also highlighted the need for fostering collaboration between the institutions from different countries that could mutually benefit from sharing best practices.
The meeting concluded with a presentation on WHO's upcoming workshop on policy briefs for policy-makers and the development of a social channel to connect members of the Network and make their communication faster and more direct, and on the way forward, including the development of policy briefs in collaboration with NEDtP members for high priority health problems in the Region.