Evidence Informed Policy In Latin America And The Caribbean

a detailed look at perceived facilitators of incorporating research evidence into public health

Abstract

Public health policy has a vital impact on the populations’ health status and has the power to either decrease health inequities or lead to further marginalization. One of the most efficient ways of closing the equity gap is to support evidence informed policy making at all levels of government. Despite high level global calls granting health research a more prominent role within the health policy field and urging researchers, policy makers and health care providers to collaborate in the efforts to bridge the gap from research evidence to applied health policy, research evidence informed health policies are still rare. Given that successful cases of evidence informed public health policy making have not been systematically reported in biomedical journals, the research reported in this paper uses Latin America and Caribbean context as a case study and draws on the in-depth semi-structured interviews with 17 researchers, policy makers and knowledge broker who have all successfully engaged in evidence informed policy making process. The overall aim was to provide insight on their experiences and perceived facilitators of incorporating research evidence into public health policies.