How can guideline development and policy development be linked?

(Press-News.org) In the second paper in a three-part series on health systems guidance, John Lavis of McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada and colleagues explore the challenge of linking guidance development and policy development at global and national levels. Writing in this week's PLoS Medicine, the authors call for a division of labour between global guidance developers, global policy developers, national guidance developers, and national policy developers, and argue that a panel charged with developing health systems guidance at the global level could best add value by ensuring that its output can be used for policy development at the global and national level, and for guidance development at the national level.

The authors state: "Our examination of the range of factors that can influence policy development (and that can be flagged for consideration in health systems guidance) highlights the need for rigorous system and political analyses in policy briefs at the national level."

In last week's PLoS Medicine, Xavier Bosch-Capblanch and colleagues, in the first paper in the health systems guidance series, examined how guidance is currently formulated in low- and middle-income countries, and the challenges to developing such guidance, such as the translation of research. The authors suggested that further research is needed to adapt existing approaches (e.g., those used in clinical guidelines) to produce meaningful advice that accounts for the complexity of health systems, political systems, and contexts.

INFORMATION:

Funding: The development of the Handbook was supported by a grant to the WHO by the Rockefeller Foundation, which had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The paper represents the views of the authors and neither WHO nor the Rockefeller Foundation.

Competing Interests: The Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services received funds from the WHO for the contributions of XBC and SL to developing the Handbook to produce health systems guidance, and some of this work is reported in this article. All other authors declare no competing interests.

Citation: Lavis JN, 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): e1001186. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001186

CONTACT:
John Lavis
McMaster Health Forum, Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis
Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Department of Political Science
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada
lavisj@mcmaster.ca

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