History and achievements

History of the Alliance

In its report on Investing in Health Research and Development (WHO 1996), the international Ad Hoc Committee on Health Research Relating to Future Intervention Options proposed several important international initiatives. One of these was to promote and strengthen health policy and systems research.

Following that report, a group of global health leaders, including senior scientists, policy-makers and representatives of various agencies and programs with a stake in health policy and systems research met at Lejondal, Sweden, and agreed on the need to create a body that would address areas of health policy and systems research that were badly needed, but also severely neglected. Although it would take another two years for the seed planted at that meeting to germinate through the formal constitution of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research in November 1999, it was in 1997 that the seed was first sown.

Participants gathered in Lejondal in 1997 and again in Stockholm in 2017 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Alliance

Initially, operating with a team of just three people, the Alliance laid strong foundations for the work that was to come as additional funding became available, making it possible to gather momentum, having achieved critical mass. Over the years, the Alliance has leveraged its position as a partnership housed within the World Health Organization (WHO) to exert an influence and achieve changes in the way that health policy and systems research is seen and the way in which it is carried out.

Key achievements

Since its inception, the Alliance has come a long way in furthering its goals and has transformed the field in terms of building its methodological foundations, capacity strengthening and widening its policy influence.

Developed the field

HPSR is a relatively new field and the Alliance has invested significant resources in building and expanding its scope. The Alliance has produced readers and guidance on HPSR and on specific methodologies. We also have a long track record of publishing flagship reports that advance and help to frame the field.

Strengthened capacities

Prior to 1996, there was little capacity to generate policy relevant HPSR in the research community, especially in LMICs. There was even less capacity to obtain and leverage evidence for stronger health systems among policy-makers and development partners. Over the years, Alliance has invested in thousands of young researchers, especially women in LMICs, strengthening their capacities to design, conduct and disseminate HPSR.

Steered a movement

The Alliance has not transformed the HPSR landscape on its own. To create and guide the HPSR movement, the Alliance has identified and collaborated with many allies and partners, including more than 300 policy and research institutions. The establishment of Health Systems Global (HSG) was a critical milestone for the field, a membership society that hosts biennial symposia on health systems research, which the Alliance continues to co-sponsor.

Changed mindsets

The Alliance has challenged the prevailing mindset of most health researchers that traditional biomedical standards, such as hypothesis testing and randomized control trials, should also apply to health policy and systems research. The Alliance has promoted more context-specific, process-oriented and responsive problem-solving approaches for HPSR, advancing the idea that there is a diversity and “goodness of fit” between different research approaches that can be used to solve different problems, and that multiple methods are often needed.

Driven impact

Over the years, the Alliance’s projects and programmes have influenced changes in policies and practices, strengthened health systems, and driven population health impacts in diverse LMIC settings. In several instances, these changes have been brought about directly - by supporting the generation of evidence relevant to decision-makers’ needs and stimulating the increased use of evidence for health systems and policies. Recent instances of such impact include:

Apart from the directly attributable impacts, the Alliance’s contributions have also influenced health outcomes indirectly – by strengthening individual and institutional capacities to generate and use HPSR, through the development of useful methods, tools and guidance, and by catalysing strategic partnerships and collaborations. These non-linear pathways of influence are captured through exemplary narrative stories of change:

This document provides an overview of the history of the Alliance, its key achievements and the special qualities that have enabled the Alliance to realise...

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