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Preparing and using policy briefs requires a range of knowledge and skills, including the ability to clarify problems, to decide on – and describe – the options to address the problem, to identify and address barriers to implementing the options, and to organise and run policy dialogues. Typically these competencies need to be developed over a period of years. A wide skill-set is also needed when writing a policy brief. It is helpful if the team working on a policy brief is able to incorporate as many of these core skills as possible. This skill-set should not be restrictive and may include, for example, experience in a relevant research background, health systems or health economics, or knowledge about how to search the literature.
A
worksheet for
developing a plan to build the capacity needed to prepare and
support the use of policy briefs is available in ‘Additional
resources’. This worksheet can be used to obtain an overview
of the skills required, who is responsible, the training they need,
and plans for how to obtain such training. Securing this capacity
will help to ensure that policy briefs are produced and used more
effectively and efficiently. An
example of a
completed worksheet is also included in ‘Additional
resources’. Completing the entire worksheet at once, as
this example illustrates, is not necessary. Rather, it may be more
useful to periodically update plans for capacity building as skills
are developed further, new people recruited, and the need for
additional training is identified.
When developing a capacity building plan, consideration should be
given to a range of strategies for building capacity,
including:
It may also be helpful for an organisation, such as a health
department or a unit supporting evidence-informed health
policymaking, to broadly assess its capacity to recognise needs for
research evidence, acquire evidence when needed, critically
appraise it, use it to inform decisions, and measure the impacts of
the policies and programmes implemented. A SUPPORT Tool for
improving how an organisation supports the use of research evidence
to inform policymaking is available in the
‘Additional
resources’ section. Included
in this SUPPORT tool is a worksheet to facilitate self-assessment
of organisational capacity to support the use of research evidence
to inform decisions.
Workshop materials and a
PowerPoint presentation on improving how an organisation
supports the use of research evidence to inform decisions are also
provided.