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Dear Colleagues,
In this month’s newsletter, we are bringing back three blogs co-authored by PEERSS country teams.
In the first blog, Institutionalizing Evidence Use in South Africa: contributions to South Africa’s Socio-Economic Impact Assessment System, Laurenz Langer from the PEERSS South Africa country team, highlights key accomplishments in supporting the institutionalization of evidence use across the South African government, through their contributions to the Socio-Economic Impact Assessment System – a legally required process for all new policy submissions to the South African Cabinet.
In the second blog, Criminal justice reform in Brazil: using evidence to address stigma, Laura Boeira highlights how the PEERSS Brazil country team is helping the National Justice Council address the stigma former prisoners and their families face as they attempt to reintegrate into society.
And in the third blog, Building an Evidence Rapid Response unit in parliament: Three early insights from the African Institute for Health Policy and Systems in Nigeria, Jesse Uneke, of the PEERSS Nigeria country team describes how they are helping to strengthen capacity for evidence use in legislative decision making and the work they are doing to establish the Evidence Rapid Response unit in Nigeria’s national parliament.
Finally, we will be taking a summer break in August and look forward to the September newsletter in which we will be sharing highlights from PEERSS’ first in-person gathering since December 2019! We will be attending Evidence 2022 in Johannesburg at the invitation of the South Africa PEERSS country team and will spend a few days afterwards reflecting on our past and charting the next phase of the partnership. Stay tuned for more!
Sincerely,
PEERSS’ Coordinating Organization (Results for Development)
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Highlights from the PEERSS Learning Community
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In July, Claire Stansfield, Information Officer at EPPI-Centre, and part of the PEERSS team from the UK, led a collaborative session on identifying research for LMIC-focused systematic reviews. The discussion focused on search strategies, barriers partners face, and the relevance of existing resource lists as well as opportunities for PEERSS partners to update or broaden their scope.
Partners used a Padlet to pose questions and share knowledge during the session.
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Collaborative Learning to Advance Knowledge and Implementation of Strategic Health Purchasing in Sub-Saharan Africa | Gautome-Munya et al.
“Collaborative learning has been shown to aid in identifying and solving problems, learning abstract concepts, and transferring and assimilating knowledge; it fosters interdisciplinary thinking and leads to deeper understanding of others; and it engages the whole learner and encourages active participation as learners develop skills.” The authors reflect on their experience in facilitating a collaborative approach in co-creating and supporting implementation of a common framework to describe and assess country-level progress on strategic purchasing: the Strategic Health Purchasing Progress Tracking Framework. Key lessons emerging from this approach include the importance of fostering mutual trust, respect, and accountability for successful collaborative learning, creating a consistent cadence for learning activities to maintain momentum, and validating findings with policymakers to facilitate application and raise awareness of different policy options and approaches.
What is known about strategies to implement evidence-informed practice at an organizational level?
This rapid review, targeted to public health organizations in Canada, assesses 59 studies on the implementation of EIDM at organizations and of evidence-informed practices. While difficult to determine the relative efficacy of certain strategies, the authors commonly found that lack of staff knowledge, competing tasks, time, and motivation may hinder progress, while strategies like building staff capacity, establishing central support persons or units, monitoring and sharing progress, and developing templates or visual guides can facilitate behavior and organizational change.
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EVIDENCE 2022 is around the corner! This year the event will be held from September 19-21 and celebrate ten years since the establishment of the Africa Evidence Network. Evidence 2022 will also provide an opportunity for collaboration, mutual learning, and a sharing of ideas to advance evidence-informed decision-making.
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