Background
Conceptual framework
Methods
KI | Gender | Current position and Institution | Experience | Role |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Female | Malaria epidemiologist, Malawi—Liverpool Wellcome Trust (MLW) | Over 10 years in malaria research | Researcher |
2 | Female | Director, Blantyre Malaria Project | Over 20 years in malaria research | Researcher |
3 | Male | Director, Centre for Social Research | Over 20 years in malaria research | Researcher |
4 | Male | Medical epidemiologist, Director University of Northern Carolina Project | Over 20 years in malaria research | Researcher |
5 | Male | Biostatistician, National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) | Over 5 years in malaria research | Researcher |
6 | Male | Epidemiologist, MLW | Over 10 years in malaria research | Researcher |
7 | Female | Public health specialist, MLW | Over 5 years in malaria research | Researcher |
8 | Male | Public health specialist, Malaria Alert Centre (MAC) | Over 5 years in malaria research | Researcher |
9 | Female | Senior Nurse, Kamuzu College of Nursing | Over 10 years in malaria research | Researcher |
10 | Male | Medical biologist, Chancellor College | Over 10 years in malaria research | Researcher |
11 | Male | Pharmacologist, College of Medicine (COM) | Over 10 years in malaria research | Researcher |
12 | Male | Malaria epidemiologist, COM | Over 10 years in malaria research | Researcher |
13 | Male | Medical epidemiologist—Director of Malaria Alert Center (MAC), COM | Over 10 years in malaria research | Researcher |
14 | Male | Senior scientist, MLW | Over 40 years in malaria research | Researcher |
15 | Female | Retired pediatrician and director of MAC, COM | Over 30 years in malaria research | Researcher |
16 | Male | Pediatrician, Ministry of Health | Over 30 years in malaria research | Researcher |
17 | Male | Pediatrician, Ministry of Health | Over 40 years malaria research | Researcher |
18 | Male | Clinical trialist | Over 10 years in malaria research | Researcher |
19 | Male | Entomologist, MAC, College of Medicine | Over 10 years in malaria research | Researcher |
20 | Female | Clinical epidemiologist, NMCP | 6 years | Programme manager |
21 | Male | Disease control officer, NMCP | 5 years | Programme manager |
22 | Male | Entomologist, NMCP | 11 years | Programme manager |
23 | Male | Environmental health officer, NMCP | 6 years | Programme manager |
24 | Male | Deputy director of planning, Ministry of Health (MOH) | 3 years | Policy maker |
25 | Male | Director of Research, MOH | 8 years | Policy maker |
26 | Male | Health economist, MOH | 11 years | Policy maker |
27 | Female | Health planner, MOH | 12 years | Policy maker |
28 | Male | Research and knowledge translation manager (MOH) | 2 years | Policy maker |
29 | Male | Head of Sector Wide Approach, MOH | 6 years | Policy maker |
30 | Male | Health planner, Director of Planning and Policy Development MOH | 2 years | Policy maker |
31 | Male | Chief of Health Services, MOH | 5 years | Policy maker |
32 | Male | Malaria advisor, World Health Organization | 15 years | Stakeholder |
33 | Male | Health economist, director Abt Associates Inc | 4 years | Stakeholder |
34 | Male | Global fund coordinator, MOH | 2 years | Stakeholder |
35 | Male | Malaria resident advisor, US Centre for Disease Control | 3 years | Stakeholder |
36 | Female | Policy and advocacy coordinator, African Institute for Development Policy | 2 years | Stakeholder |
37 | Male | Policy development and analysis, Abt Associates Inc | 4 years | Stakeholder |
38 | Male | Chief research service officer, National Commission for Science and Technology | 16 years | Stakeholder |
39 | Male | Malaria program specialist | 5 years | Stakeholder |
Results
Specific factors | |
---|---|
Facilitating research uptake factors | |
Institutional factors | Global influence on the emphasis of evidence driven policies |
The establishment of the department of Research in Ministry of Health | |
The revival of the Policy Development Unit (PDU) and the development of guidelines for policy development and analysis | |
The availability of the National Health Research Agenda (NHRA) | |
Availability of funding organization such as NCST, USPMI, and Global Fund | |
Establishment of the Knowledge Translation Platform (KTP) and the Knowledge Translation Unit (KTU) | |
Establishment of the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) in Malawi | |
Technical Working Groups to discuss research, and annual research dissemination conferences | |
Collaboration of the NMCP and research centres such as the Malaria Alert Centre (MAC) | |
Personal factors | Local Researchers trained in various malaria research disciplines |
Growing number of researchers interested in knowledge translation | |
Research factors | Availability of malaria research conducted in Malawi |
Availability of the NHRA that includes the malaria research agenda | |
A position already established by WHO | |
Barriers to research uptake | |
Institutional factors | Lack of a platform on which researchers can engage with the public |
Lack of research capacity at the NMCP | |
Politics | |
Personal factors–researchers | Lack of research communication skills to policy makers |
Focus on publishing and career advancement | |
Lack of collaboration of researchers with policy makers | |
Lack of collaboration among researchers of different disciplines | |
Personal factors–policy makers | Lack of time to find and read research articles |
Inability of research synthesis | |
Lack of motivation and rigid to change | |
Mistrust of research findings | |
Research factors | Research not addressing the country’s needs |
Funder driven research | |
Unknown WHO policy position | |
Access to malaria research and lack of a malaria research repository |
Facilitating factors to malaria research utilization for policy development
Institutional factors
Global influence
“The current movement worldwide is that research findings must find their way to policy and practice through systematic processes which are now undergoing by the title ‘knowledge translation platform’”. (Policy maker)
Government efforts
Ministry of Health
“We had to revitalize from a scratch from 2012 what used to be the policy development unit to make it functional and be able to play a coordinating role to the healthy policies in the healthy sector in Malawi…and am happy to report that now the unit is coordinating various health policies”. (Stakeholder)
“The national commission for science and technology is key in terms of contributing towards promoting the undertaking of research to contribute towards development of policy in the identified priority areas of research”. (Stakeholder)
“How do I make sure I translate my findings in an appropriate way to policy makers…how do we keep on highlighting our individual study findings as something that policy makers can take a decision on…so I think the separate developing groups of people who focus on knowledge translation can really use best practices”. (Malaria researcher)
NMCP
“I like technical working groups because they are in a way rather informal where you can actually engage with the ministry of health officials and as researchers we can learn the key issues that the ministry is looking for”. (Malaria researcher)
“Malaria Alert Centre is directly involved with the NMCP from the inception of a study, so it’s not hard when we are presenting the results for policy changes because they are involved”. (Malaria researcher)
University of Malawi, College of Medicine efforts
AFIDEP efforts
“The initiative of some programmes like AFIDEP are very good because those can help to mobilize resources for local initiatives”. (Stakeholder)
Personal factors
“I think there is a real momentum or opportunity now with a building of capacity of people with interest in knowledge translation, in health systems research and in policy process…we have people who know better how to review the current status of research and internationally link to what is available on the national level and identify the gaps but they also know how to develop policy briefs, which I as a researcher don’t have that much experience”. (Malaria researcher)
Research factors
“I mean too many studies have been done in malaria, sharing of these research results I think sometimes is not there”. (Malaria researcher)
“Being an ICEMR means that we have what we call a powerful front that when we produce the results they have already been reviewed by all these bodies and when we make recommendation to the ministry it is really powerful because even the ministry knows that it’s coming from a very powerful front and it has been reviewed by collaborators internationally”. (Malaria researcher)
Barriers to malaria research utilization for policy development
Institutional barriers
“If you are going to really influence policy you shouldn’t only be influencing people within the Ministry of Health, but the people for whom policy is being made for, without that platform you don’t have community based organizations, [Non-Governmental Organisations] NGOs or even traditional chiefs, and influential people in the community actually contributing to the policy makeup”. (Malaria researcher)
“The NMCP will wait for WHO because they don’t have the capacity sometimes to actually evaluate the evidence, now for WHO to have a stamp on it you have to carry out quite extensive studies and there is a lag time and you lose out on possible benefits of a strategy that is more locally effective”. (Malaria researcher)
“For people to appreciate researchers they have to have an interest in implementing data driven policies, so they will always absorb research if they have that kind of interest, sometimes you may get in a situation where you might be discussing certain things but people have preconceived ideas already about what they want the situation to be even if the data may be speaking otherwise”. (Malaria researcher)
Personal barriers
Researchers
“My role ends when I present the results…if the Ministry wants they can make a decision on how they are going to utilize those results to develop policies. As far as I am concerned as a researcher I will do the research and make a presentation…that’s all I know but the question is do I have the skills to translate whatever the results I have into something that the Ministry of Health can easily utilize…I think most of us as researchers don’t have that experience of translating the research results into something that the ministry of health can easily use”. (Malaria researcher)
“But one very critical thing is collaboration, because sometimes people do studies, like check for insecticide resistance and tell us that there is resistance in the whole country…we have no idea and [we] don’t know the person and the protocol. That will not change the policy even if the results are good, it will not, because that was academic”. (Programme manager)
“Unfortunately some of these studies are not even known to the Ministry…people come to this country from out there to do their research in different parts of this country…it is only when you go to a conference abroad and you find there are a lot of papers on Malawi”. (Malaria researcher)
“We are usually working in narrow areas and we don’t think about other discipline that would actually strengthen our research work. So in the planning phase of all these research studies we should be looking for collaboration”. (Malaria researcher)
Policymakers
“Most of the policymakers, do not have time to go through journals and read what research is. They say it but [actually] in actual sense they don’t read and even if you read, you will get two [to] three articles [you can get articles] that are saying different things”. (Malaria researcher)
“There are always issues [of] about generalization…but sir you did this in Chikwawa, how do we know that it applies to the whole country?” (Malaria researcher)
Research barriers
“If Malawi really wants to answer its own questions that are pertinent then Malawians have to come up with resources for research. And most of this research that we are talking about is not expensive research, this is research that can be conducted with very minimal resources”. (Malaria researcher)
“Evidence normally translates quite slowly into a policy especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Since we tend to depend a lot on guidance from international agencies. Where we have a feel about a particular thing that does not work really well for us, we still want to wait from some [the] prompting from these international bodies for us to move”. (Malaria researcher)
“The problem is limited access to data, people do research but I don’t think you have a platform where you can put your report, like a single repository of malaria research in Malawi where if I want something I’ll just click and get a link or get somewhere where I can get malaria specific research. So without that kind of a repository of information for malaria, for us as a country decision makers are often faced with a challenge of knowledge gap when we actually have enough information”. (Stakeholder)