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Identifying advocacy strategies, challenges and opportunities for increasing domestic health policy and health systems research funding in Nigeria: Perspectives of researchers and policymakers

INTRODUCTION: Poor funding for Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR) is a major constraint to the development, generation and uptake of HPSR evidence in Low and Middle-Income countries. The study assessed the status of HPSR domestic funding and advocacy strategies for improving HPSR funding in N...

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Autores principales: Okedo-Alex, Ijeoma Nkem, Akamike, Ifeyinwa Chizoba, Olisaekee, Gladys Onyinye, Okeke, Chinyere Cecilia, Uneke, Chigozie Jesse
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7983353/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33752682
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12961-021-00701-5
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author Okedo-Alex, Ijeoma Nkem
Akamike, Ifeyinwa Chizoba
Olisaekee, Gladys Onyinye
Okeke, Chinyere Cecilia
Uneke, Chigozie Jesse
author_facet Okedo-Alex, Ijeoma Nkem
Akamike, Ifeyinwa Chizoba
Olisaekee, Gladys Onyinye
Okeke, Chinyere Cecilia
Uneke, Chigozie Jesse
author_sort Okedo-Alex, Ijeoma Nkem
collection PubMed
description INTRODUCTION: Poor funding for Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR) is a major constraint to the development, generation and uptake of HPSR evidence in Low and Middle-Income countries. The study assessed the status of HPSR domestic funding and advocacy strategies for improving HPSR funding in Nigeria. It equally explored the knowledge and perception of the domestic funding status of HPSR and the effect of capacity building on the knowledge of domestic funding for HPSR in Nigeria. METHODS: This was a sub-national study involving policymakers and researchers from Enugu and Ebonyi States in Southeast Nigeria who participated in the sub-national Health Systems Global convening for the African region. A before-after study design (workshop) was utilized. Data collection employed semi-structured questionnaires, group and panel discussions. The workshop facilitated knowledge of HPSR, funding processes, and advocacy strategies for increased domestic funding for HPSR. Pre and immediate post-workshop knowledge assessments were done. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 25 and thematic analysis. RESULTS: Twenty-six participants were involved in the study. Half were females (50.0%) and 46.2% were aged 35–44 years. Policymakers constituted 23.1% of the participants. Domestic funding for HPSR in Nigeria was adjudged to be grossly inadequate. Identified barriers to domestic funding of HPSR included bureaucratic bottlenecks, political and policy transitions, and corruption. Potential opportunities centered on existing policy documents and emerging private sector willingness to fund health research. Multi-stakeholder advocacy coalitions, continuous advocacy and researcher skill-building on advocacy with active private sector involvement were the strategies proffered by the participants. Pre-workshop, understanding of the meaning of HPSR had the highest mean ratings while knowledge of budgeting processes and use of legal action to enable opportunities for budget advocacy for HPSR funding had the lowest mean ratings. Following the capacity-building workshop, all knowledge and understanding parameters markedly improved (percentage increase of 12.5%–71.0%). CONCLUSION: This study found that there was paucity of domestic funding for HPSR in Nigeria alongside poor knowledge of budgeting and advocacy strategies among both policymakers and researchers. We recommend the deployment of these identified strategies and wider national and regional stakeholder engagement towards prioritizing and improving domestic funding for HPSR.
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spelling pubmed-79833532021-03-23 Identifying advocacy strategies, challenges and opportunities for increasing domestic health policy and health systems research funding in Nigeria: Perspectives of researchers and policymakers Okedo-Alex, Ijeoma Nkem Akamike, Ifeyinwa Chizoba Olisaekee, Gladys Onyinye Okeke, Chinyere Cecilia Uneke, Chigozie Jesse Health Res Policy Syst Research INTRODUCTION: Poor funding for Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR) is a major constraint to the development, generation and uptake of HPSR evidence in Low and Middle-Income countries. The study assessed the status of HPSR domestic funding and advocacy strategies for improving HPSR funding in Nigeria. It equally explored the knowledge and perception of the domestic funding status of HPSR and the effect of capacity building on the knowledge of domestic funding for HPSR in Nigeria. METHODS: This was a sub-national study involving policymakers and researchers from Enugu and Ebonyi States in Southeast Nigeria who participated in the sub-national Health Systems Global convening for the African region. A before-after study design (workshop) was utilized. Data collection employed semi-structured questionnaires, group and panel discussions. The workshop facilitated knowledge of HPSR, funding processes, and advocacy strategies for increased domestic funding for HPSR. Pre and immediate post-workshop knowledge assessments were done. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 25 and thematic analysis. RESULTS: Twenty-six participants were involved in the study. Half were females (50.0%) and 46.2% were aged 35–44 years. Policymakers constituted 23.1% of the participants. Domestic funding for HPSR in Nigeria was adjudged to be grossly inadequate. Identified barriers to domestic funding of HPSR included bureaucratic bottlenecks, political and policy transitions, and corruption. Potential opportunities centered on existing policy documents and emerging private sector willingness to fund health research. Multi-stakeholder advocacy coalitions, continuous advocacy and researcher skill-building on advocacy with active private sector involvement were the strategies proffered by the participants. Pre-workshop, understanding of the meaning of HPSR had the highest mean ratings while knowledge of budgeting processes and use of legal action to enable opportunities for budget advocacy for HPSR funding had the lowest mean ratings. Following the capacity-building workshop, all knowledge and understanding parameters markedly improved (percentage increase of 12.5%–71.0%). CONCLUSION: This study found that there was paucity of domestic funding for HPSR in Nigeria alongside poor knowledge of budgeting and advocacy strategies among both policymakers and researchers. We recommend the deployment of these identified strategies and wider national and regional stakeholder engagement towards prioritizing and improving domestic funding for HPSR. BioMed Central 2021-03-22 /pmc/articles/PMC7983353/ /pubmed/33752682 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12961-021-00701-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Okedo-Alex, Ijeoma Nkem
Akamike, Ifeyinwa Chizoba
Olisaekee, Gladys Onyinye
Okeke, Chinyere Cecilia
Uneke, Chigozie Jesse
Identifying advocacy strategies, challenges and opportunities for increasing domestic health policy and health systems research funding in Nigeria: Perspectives of researchers and policymakers
title Identifying advocacy strategies, challenges and opportunities for increasing domestic health policy and health systems research funding in Nigeria: Perspectives of researchers and policymakers
title_full Identifying advocacy strategies, challenges and opportunities for increasing domestic health policy and health systems research funding in Nigeria: Perspectives of researchers and policymakers
title_fullStr Identifying advocacy strategies, challenges and opportunities for increasing domestic health policy and health systems research funding in Nigeria: Perspectives of researchers and policymakers
title_full_unstemmed Identifying advocacy strategies, challenges and opportunities for increasing domestic health policy and health systems research funding in Nigeria: Perspectives of researchers and policymakers
title_short Identifying advocacy strategies, challenges and opportunities for increasing domestic health policy and health systems research funding in Nigeria: Perspectives of researchers and policymakers
title_sort identifying advocacy strategies, challenges and opportunities for increasing domestic health policy and health systems research funding in nigeria: perspectives of researchers and policymakers
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7983353/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33752682
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12961-021-00701-5
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