Policy dialogue as a collaborative tool for multistakeholder health governance: a scoping study

Abstract

IntroductionHealth system governance is the cornerstone of performant, equitable and sustainable health systems aiming towards universal health coverage. Global health actors have increasingly been using policy dialogue (PD) as a governance tool to engage with both state and non-state stakeholders. Despite attempts to frame PD practices, it remains a catch-all term for both health systems professionals and researchers.MethodWe conducted a scoping study on PD. We identified 25 articles published in English between 1985 and 2017 and 10 grey literature publications. The analysis was guided by the following questions: (1) How do the authors define PD? (2) What do we learn about PD practices and implementation factors? (3) What are the specificities of PD in low-income and middle-income countries?ResultsThe analysis highlighted three definitions of policy dialogue: a knowledge exchange and translation platform, a mode of governance and an instrument for negotiating international development aid. Success factors include the participants’ continued and sustained engagement throughout all the relevant stages, their ability to make a constructive contribution to the discussions while being truly representative of their organisation and their high interest and stake in the subject. Prerequisites to ensuring that participants remained engaged were a clear process, a shared understanding of the goals at all levels of the PD and a PD approach consistent with the PD objective. In the context of development aid, the main challenges lie in the balance of power between stakeholders, the organisational or technical capacity of recipient country stakeholders to drive or contribute effectively to the PD processes and the increasingly technocratic nature of PD.ConclusionPD requires a high level of collaborative governance expertise and needs constant, although not necessarily high, financial support. These conditions are crucial to make it a real driver of health system reform in countries’ paths towards universal health coverage.

Assessing the usefulness of policy brief and policy dialogue as knowledge translation tools towards contextualizing the accountability framework for routine immunization at a subnational level in Nigeria

“…The contextualization of policy options stated in the policy brief during the policy dialogue is an invaluable takeaway from the policy dialogue, as demonstrated in our study. Evidence has shown the usefulness of policy dialogues in promoting stakeholder involvement in translating evidence to policy [ 17 , 18 , 35 , 36 ].…”

Shaping Policy on Chronic Diseases through National Policy Dialogs in CHRODIS PLUS

“…We conclude that the sustainability can be improved if all conceived actions are integrated into existing policies, programs or processes. In addition, political capital and commitment—and particular, sustained funding—were seen as key to achieving many of the follow-up actions indicated by the policy dialogs [ 24 ]. We suggest that further research of this aspect could result in important longer-term learnings about policy dialog planning, implementation and overall impact.…”

“…It is important to note, however, that feedback from participants in the CHRODIS PLUS national policy dialogs indicated that their efficacy as a tool would have been enhanced had the joint action envisioned providing sustained financial support to the dialog process, as well as a framework for monitoring implementation of related action plans over the short-, mid- and long-term. Current literature also supports the importance of sufficient financial commitment for policy dialog processes [ 24 ].…”

Engaging stakeholders with evidence and uncertainty: developing a toolkit

“…Case studies have offered few details about how civil society has been involved, or its influence (Berman et al, 2015;Kasonde and Campbell, 2012;Ongolo-Zogo et al, 2018;El-Jardali et al, 2020). The main challenge is lack of capacity: the capacity of convenors to host and facilitate debate by a mix of stakeholders, and the capacity of stakeholders to bring their group perspectives to debate the relevant evidence (Robert et al, 2020).…”