Health Systems Global’s Translating Evidence into Action Technical Working Group (TWG) hosted a TWG Panel Session at the 4th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Vancouver on Thursday, November 17, 2016.

“Decoding Knowledge Translation: Initiatives, Institutions, and Perspectives on Moving from Knowledge to Action  and Working Across Constituencies for Policy and Program Change” featured: Devaki Nambiar (Public Health Foundation of India), Justin Parkhurst (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), and Leizel Lagrada-Rombaua (Joint Learning Network for UHC), and was moderated by Elaine Baruwa (Abt Associates).

The Translating Evidence to Action Thematic Working Group and the Cross-Constituency Engagement sub-TWG of SHaPeS seek to “decode” knowledge translation and cross-constituency engagement initiative and institutions using a global inventory of them to be presented and discussed. The objective is encouraging the use of strategies relating to planning, carrying out and disseminating research that increase the likelihood of health policy and systems research resulting in action.

About the Speakers

Elaine Baruwa | Abt Associates
Dr. Elaine M. Baruwa has over 13 years of experience conducting program and economic evaluations, and working on pricing and costing policies/tools for the financing of health services and health systems in Nigeria, Haiti, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Swaziland, and other low-income countries. Dr. Baruwa co-lectured on Cost Benefit and Cost Effectiveness courses at Johns Hopkins. She has led economic evaluations in over 20 countries. Dr. Baruwa is a senior technical advisor on insurance modeling and other health financing research. Dr. Baruwa holds a PhD in International Health, a MSc in Health Management, and a BSc in Financial Economics.

Devaki Nambiar | Public Health Foundation of India
Dr. Devaki Nambiar is a Senior Research Scientist at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) who employs social science theory and mixed methods to understand and address health inequalitie
s and social exclusion in health systems of resource-poor settings. She concurrently supports post-graduate training and capacity building in health policy and systems research as an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Public Health – Delhi. She is also a Bernard Lown Scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Justin Parkhurst | London School of Economics and Political Science
Dr. Justin Parkhurst BSc MPhil DPhil is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He previously worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, heading the ERC funded GRIP-Health research programme which investigates political and institutional aspects of evidence utilization for health decisions. He has recently published a book with Routledge discussing the politics and governance of evidence called The Politics of Evidence: from Evidence Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence. The book is available open access as an e-book.

Leizel Lagrada-Rombaua |  Joint Learning Network
Dr. Leizel P. Lagrada-Rombaua MD, MPH, PhD is the former Head Executive Staff and Group Vice-President (Officer-in-Change) at the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation or PhilHealth (2013-2014) with prior appointment as Senior Manager (OIC) for Accreditation Department and Standards and Monitoring Department (2012-2013). Dr. Lagrada-Rombaua started her career as a Municipal Health Officer in Palawan, Philippines administering rural health services in a variety of roles. Currently she is supporting the Joint Learning Network as an independent consultant.