This article is part of a series written for people responsible for making decisions about health policies and programmes and for those who support these decision makers. Policy dialogues allow research evidence to be considered together with the views, experiences and tacit knowledge of those who will be involved in, or affected by, future decisions about a high-priority issue. Increasing inte...

It is widely accepted that informed consent is a requirement of ethical biomedical research. It is less clear why this is so. As an argumentative strategy the article asks whether it would be legitimate for the state to require people to participate in research. This article argues that the consent requirement cannot be defended by appeal to any simple principle, such as not treating people mer...

BACKGROUND In Nigeria, malaria, schistosomiasis and lymphatic filariasis are among infectious diseases of poverty (IDP) with severe health burden and require effective policy strategies for their control. In this study, we investigated the value of policy brief and policy dialogue as excellent policymaking mechanisms that enable policymakers to adapt effective evidence informed policy for IDP c...

many countries are turning their attention to the use of explicit financial incentives to drive desired improvements in healthcare performance. however, we have only a weak evidence-base to inform policy in this area. the research challenge is to generate robust evidence on what financial incentives work, under what circumstances, for whom and with what intended and unintended consequences.

Background The importance of evaluating policy processes to achieve health equity is well recognised but such evaluation encounters methodological, theoretical and political challenges. This paper describes how a program theorybased evaluation framework can be developed and tested, using the example of an evaluation of the South Australian Health in All Policies (HiAP) initiative.   Methods A f...

BACKGROUND Evidence-informed decision-making is essential to ensure that health programs and services are effective and offer value for money; however, barriers to the use of evidence persist. Emerging systems science approaches and advances in technology are providing new methods and tools to facilitate evidence-based decision-making. Simulation modelling offers a unique tool for synthesising ...

Although there is evidence of wide-spread organizational and societal adoption of open source and free software (OS/FS) products, processes, philosophy and business models, our understanding of OS/FS in the organizational and societal contexts is still quite limited. In this panel, we seek to stimulate an open and productive conversation by articulating the key research questions which have inf...