The use of evidence in decision-making in the health sector and other development efforts remains sub-optimal due to bottlenecks that operate at individual, system and institutional levels. There are many widely acknowledged barriers to evidence use, including lacking or weak relationships between decision-makers and producers of evidence, untimely and/or irrelevant evidence, inappropriately packaged evidence, politics and interests, weak capacity among decision-makers to find and use evidence, lacking wide dissemination of evidence, among others.
The development of the evidence-informed policy-making training (EIPM) course presented here responds to the challenge of weak capacity among decision-makers to find and use evidence in decision-making.
The goal of this training course is to strengthen the technical capacity of mid-level policymakers (i.e. technical staff) in the health sector in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in accessing, appraising, interpreting, synthesizing, and utilizing research evidence in decision-making.