Fostering discussions between students and decision-makers, researchers and citizens for evidence-based policy-making in health

To mark the end of the Global Health public policy Master’s year, several students previously enrolled in the course Evidence-based policy-making in health: theory and practice(s) at the School of Public Affairs at Sciences Po led an interactive panel discussion on recommendations concerning evidence-based policy making in health. This event concluded their work throughout the class which was finalized with the publication of an article in the Archives of Public Health, portraying four policy recommendations to improve evidence-based policy making in health, through the lens of a young generation of public policy students and future policymakers.

Students (Margaux Françoise, Lina Tafur, Clara Leroy, Maya-lhanze Lama and Raquel Melgar Calderón) along with their instructor Louisa Stüwe presented what the class voted as the most important recommendations for the uptake of evidence-based policy making in health, namely the need and means to foster citizens' and patients’ involvement in health policies, suggestions to manage conflicts of interest, the importance of having strong health information systems to move from data to wisdom and the way to address evolving and uncertain evidence for artificial-intelligence based health solutions. In general, their recommendations highlight the need to rethink the entire health policy cycle through institutional incentives but also invite for a change of mindset and more effective tools for knowledge translation to bridge the communication gaps between policymakers and the scientific community.

Following their presentation, evidence-based health policy advocate, Dr. Mona Nasser (University of Plymouth, UK)  presented a research keynote highlighting the role of systematic reviews in policy decisions. Dr. Mona Nasser emphasized that "one key skill that young professionals need to develop throughout their career is to make decisions despite the existing uncertainty - even for decisions with a large volume of scientific literature - evidence can reduce the uncertainty in decision making, but does not eliminate it." 

Subsequently, Yann Le Cam, CEO of the European non-governmental patient-driven alliance of rare disease patient organizations EURORDIS, whose mission is to work across borders and diseases to improve the lives of people living with a rare disease, led a policy keynote on the importance of evidence-based policy making for patients and specially those with rare diseases. Throughout his keynote, Yann Le Cam emphasized on the importance of narratives: ”[At EURORDIS] we want to be sure that when we say something, not only we are authentic, but that we can support it with quantitative and qualitative evidence, [supporting] it with testimonies. (...) When it comes to policy, evidence is important, but the person who speaks about it [and brings awareness] is as important and maybe having an article in the media is as important.” 

Afterwards, both speakers had the opportunity to share their views and perspectives alongside Christine Berling (PhD., Ministry of Solidarity and Health, France) in a roundtable moderated by Louisa Stüwe (French Ministry of Health and and Sciences Po instructor) and the students. Their discussion was varied and touched upon subjects such as political will, conflict of or competing interests, commercial interests, Global North-South divide in scientific research, lack of evidence (data gaps), decision-making concerning research funding. 

From their discussion, some recommendations were provided for the uptake of evidence-based policy making in health such as :

1) increasing transparency in order to tackle competing interests between governments, international and regional organizations, the civil society, non-governmental organizations, and private for-profit organizations,

2) more collaboration between the “Global North” and “Global South” to address research funding inequalities and to harness global collective knowledge to tackle shared problems, and 

3) promote the development of research protocols to start collecting and using health data on public health issues that are not usually researched because of lack of  awareness from policy-makers or research-funding organizations as well as from the general public , as it occurs with rare diseases. 

Panelists ended the discussion by underlining the fact that policy-making is not solely based on evidence, many times there is little or no evidence, at times policies are driven by a hunch or a feeling, or personal experience or feelings from the policymakers, or on the current social context of the world. However, they agreed that the development of health literacy on a large scale is thus a key element for facilitating the adherence to public health policies and health promotion. 

Overall, the discussion proved that even when students and guest speakers shared different perspectives and ideas around evidence-based policy-making in health, both asserted the same will to foster this practice. All speakers agreed that the context of uncertainty and widespread fake news in which we live should not deter scientists and policy makers from communicating widely with citizens in order to integrate them more into decision-making and make these policies more understandable. 

learn more

• (Re)Watch the whole conference (May 12, 2022)
• The Global Health policy stream at the School of Public Affairs (English track)
• The "Santé" stream at the School of Public Affairs (French track)