PLoS Medicine
(Accessed 24 March 2012)
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/browse.action?field=date

Guidance for Evidence-Informed Policies about Health Systems: Assessing How Much Confidence to Place in the Research Evidence
Simon Lewin, Xavier Bosch-Capblanch, Sandy Oliver, Elie A. Akl, Gunn E. Vist, John N. Lavis, Davina Ghersi, John-Arne Røttingen, Peter Steinmann, Metin Gulmezoglu, Peter Tugwell, Fadi El-Jardali, Andy Haines Policy Forum, published 20 Mar 2012
doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001187

Summary Points
– Assessing how much confidence to place in different types of research evidence is key to informing judgements regarding policy options to address health systems problems.

– Systematic and transparent approaches to such assessments are particularly important given the complexity of many health systems interventions.

– Useful tools are available to assess how much confidence to place in the different types of research evidence needed to support different steps in the policy-making process; those for assessing evidence of effectiveness are most developed.

– Tools need to be developed to assist judgements regarding evidence from systematic reviews on other key factors such as the acceptability of policy options to stakeholders, implementation feasibility, and equity.

– Research is also needed on ways to develop, structure, and present policy options within global health systems guidance.

This is the third paper in a three-part series in PLoS Medicine on health systems guidance.