Resource
Meeting Report
This report provides practical insight into research utilization and the role researchers and research organizations can play in ensuring that research is considered in policymaking and program implementation. The report documents a meeting hosted by the Evidence Project in October 2017 adjacent to the International Population Conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, IUSSP. Project staff shared the Evidence Project’s research utilization strategy and provided concrete examples of research in action. The report provides a summary of presentations on (a) how research has been shaped to inform policy change for provision of family planning services through patent medicine vendors in Nigeria, (b) how research improved a new practice of providing adolescent sexual and reproductive health centers in Bangladesh, (c) how research contributes to(scaling up child marriage prevention in Ethiopia, and (d) how to plan for research utilization in the context of an emerging practice, such as social accountability for family planning programs.
As Dr. Carmen Barasso, chair of the UN Secretary-General’s Independent Accountability Panel (IAP) for Every Woman, Every Child, Every Adolescent, said, “Researchers should not think that their findings will magically lead to policy change.”