National health dissemination symposium held in Accra
The Minister of Health, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, has identified the lack of a structured platform for information exchange between researchers and policy makers as a major reason why research findings do not inform policy making.
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Meanwhile, he said, policy makers continued to look out for more effective ways of using research evidence to support health policies to promote and enhance good healthcare delivery practices.
This was contained in a speech read on his behalf at the opening of the fourth national health dissemination symposium in Accra last Wednesday.
Symposium
The two-day symposium was organised by the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
It showcased research products that have the potential of significantly influencing policy and programme decisions relevant to policy makers, implementers, decision makers and other researchers, as a means of enhancing health care delivery.
The 2017 edition of the bi-annual symposium was held on the theme: “From research to policy and practice: Evidence-based decision making for equitable improvement in health status”.
The objective of this year’s symposium was to bring to the fore, policy and programming implications of research findings and tested innovations in the health sector, as well as rejuvenate the purpose of setting up health research institutions and to forge greater linkages between researchers, health managers and decision makers.
The symposium was attended by 200 participants made up of researchers, development partners, policy makers and research students.
Timely event
Mr Agyeman-Manu said the government for its part, was committed to enhancing its relationship with researchers and ensure that research appropriately informed policy decisions in the health sector.
He described the event as timely given the prevailing health situation in Ghana, which now includes the double burden disease profile, epidemiology shift and demographic transitions.
He submitted that there was wide-spread evidence of failure in implementing health interventions that have proved by high quality research to be cost-effective in low income countries.
He attributed the failure to weakness of the health system, lack of professional regulation as well as access to evidence.
For her part, the Deputy Director-General of the GHS, Dr Gloria Quansah-Asare, underscored the need to streamline research findings with regard to policy and programme formulation, particularly in the health sector, to enhance healthcare delivery.
She assured the researchers and other participants of the GHS’s commitment to avoid situations where relevant research findings only became decorations on shelves.
Productive intervention
In a presentation at the ceremony, a former Rector of the Ghana College of Surgeons and Physicians, Professor David Ofori-Adjei, advised stakeholders in the health sector to ensure that health research supported productive interventions to address inequalities in health-care delivery and policy gaps.
He bemoaned the weak capacity of state systems to absorb findings and recommendations of well-conducted researches due to lack of funding to implement them.
The USAID/Ghana Director of Health, Population and Nutrition Office, Ms Akua Kwateng-Addo, said health research should not only generate knowledge but should be the basis for healthcare interventions.
“We at USAID Ghana are committed to addressing Ghana’s most challenging health problems through research, introduction and scaling up of evidence-based solutions,” she stated.
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