Building systems to improve the use of evidence in health policy: exploring institutions in four African countries

Justin Parkhurst, Associate Professor of Global Health Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science

In the global health and public policy community it is common to hear calls for evidence based policymaking. Yet numerous scholars have taken issue with this term as being overly-simplistic, failing to account for the multiple forms of evidence that may be useful to inform decisions, and potentially obscuring the inherently political nature of policy decision making as well. The alternative to simply calling for ‘more evidence’ is to critically consider what constitutes better uses of evidence within different policy arenas, and how to build systems of science and evidence advice that serve to improve the governance of evidence. This talk will reflect on these conceptual issues in relation to a new programme of work that aims to understand and improve systems of evidence use for health policy decision making in a set of four African countries. 

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