Lewin, S., et al. (2010). Guidance for Evidence-Informed Policies about Health Systems: Assessing How Much Confidence to Place in the Research Evidence. PLoS Medicine. Retrieved from http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001187;jsessionid=5D5E068626DB073D2D05298601A0F6BF.
Summary Points
- Assessing how much confidence to place in different types of research evidence is key to informing judgements regarding policy options to address health systems problems.
- Systematic and transparent approaches to such assessments are particularly important given the complexity of many health systems interventions.
- Useful tools are available to assess how much confidence to place in the different types of research evidence needed to support different steps in the policy-making process; those for assessing evidence of effectiveness are most developed.
- Tools need to be developed to assist judgements regarding evidence from systematic reviews on other key factors such as the acceptability of policy options to stakeholders, implementation feasibility, and equity.
- Research is also needed on ways to develop, structure, and present policy options within global health systems guidance.
- This is the third paper in a three-part series in PLoS Medicine on health systems guidance.
