Kemri-Wellcome Trust Research Programme: Enhancing evidence informed decision making (EEVIDEM) for health in Kenya

While the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) has been doing policy engagement, this has been characterized by fragmented individual researcher and research project specific initiatives. The programme is now keen on institutionalizing and deepening its policy engagement efforts and has allocated resources to support a full time policy engagement position with the responsibility of developing and implementing a programme wide policy engagement strategy. Our proposal aims to complement this commitment by piloting selected policy engagement strategies as part of a systematic and institutionalized policy engagement framework within the KWTRP. Specifically, we will pilot a combination of the following strategies: a) researcher embeddedness within Ministry of Health (MOH) and county department of healths policy making processes b) regular policy dialogue between researchers, policy makers and other health policy stakeholders, and c) reciprocal secondment of staff between the KWTRP and the Kenya MOH. These strategies are aimed at facilitating the bi-directional engagement between KWTRP researchers and health policy makers that will enhance the influence of programme research on health policy decisions, alignment of KWTRP research with health system priorities, and health policy makers demand of research evidence. We will use theory driven evaluation approaches to evaluate the pilot.

Programme: Policy Engagement Award

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