Lavis, J.N., Røttingen, J.A., Bosch-Capblanch, X., Atun, R., El-Jardali, F., et al. (2012). Guidance for Evidence-Informed Policies about Health Systems: Linking Guidance Development to Policy Development. PLoS Med, 9(3). Retrieved from http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001186.
“Policies about health systems can have profound impacts on citizens, patients, health professionals, and managers. For physicians, for example, the impacts can include changing their scope of practice (a governance arrangement), how they are paid (a financial arrangement), where they provide care (a delivery arrangement), and how their practices are supported in providing the types of care that citizens and patients value (an implementation strategy). Contextual factors are extremely important in shaping decisions about health systems, and policy makers have to work through all the pros and cons of different options before developing new policies on health systems.
In this paper, which is the second of a three-part series on health systems guidance, by considering issues raised during meetings of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Task Force on Developing Health Systems Guidance, we:
- Explore the links between health systems guidance development and policy development at global and national levels;
- Examine the range of factors that can influence policy development.
