The program promotes the generation and use of health policy and systems research as a means to improve the health systems and moving towards Universal health.
Main area of work:
IPIER (Improving Program Implementation through Embedded Research)
Countries of the Region of the Americas have been steadily progressing on making their health systems more efficient, effective, accessible, and inclusive. In the Regional Strategy of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) for Universal Access to Health and Universal Health Coverage (Resolution CD53.R14, PAHO Directing Council, 2014) approved by member States in 2014, countries committed to defining an action plan around four simultaneous, interdependent strategic lines that guide the transformation and/or strengthening of health systems toward universal access to health and universal health coverage (Universal Health):
- expansion of equitable access to comprehensive, quality, people, and community-centered health services;
- strengthening governance and stewardship;
- adequacy of financing with efficiency and equity; and
- action on the social determinants.
Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR) has been widely recognized as an important field contributing to attain Universal Health. According to the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, health policy and systems research (HPSR) "seeks to understand and improve how societies organize themselves in achieving collective health goals, and how different actors interact in the policy and implementation processes to contribute to policy outcomes".
The Pan American Health Organization vigorously supports the process of producing and translating evidence into policy through the use of HPSR. In 2012, the World Health Organization published a strategy on health policy and systems research aiming at changing "the way HPSR is managed as a research endeavor, embedding it much more effectively in the domains of policy-making and implementation."
HPSR is a multidisciplinary field, involving people from different disciplines that together "draw a comprehensive picture of how health systems respond and adapt to health policies, and how health policies can shape - and be shaped by - health systems and the broader determinants of health."
(Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research).