Assessing the interactions of people and policy-makers in social participation for health: an inventory of participatory governance measures from a rapid systematic literature review.

Social participation, also termed stakeholder voice, is an important component of health system governance. Increased interactions between the community and policy makers could facilitate a more responsive health system that targets the needs of the community better. Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a handbook on social participation that identified five key themes for ministries of health to consider when engaging the input of the community. In this rapid systematic literature review, we aimed to identify quantitative and qualitative measures that have been used to assess aspects of social participation involving people and policy makers. We identified 172 measures from 48 studies from countries in all six WHO regions. These measures were categorized by all five themes from the handbook on social participation and these measures are linked to 27 concepts. This rapid review found that the focus of measures is largely on the existence of participation-be it by the general population or specific vulnerable groups-rather than on the quality of their participation. The measures in this inventory may be useful for ministries of health and other key stakeholders to use when developing methods to assess and encourage social participation in their context.

‘Build forward better’ must include heavy investment in government capacities to engage with communities and civil society

Civil society and community groups are active players in the COVID-19 response, providing support, advice and information where government reach is poor. Yet most governments have not managed to bring civil society’s perspectives, insights, and experiences into the COVID-19 response in a systematic way. If the world is to ‘build forward better’, more regular and systematised government-civil society engagement will need to underpin a shifttowards more inclusive health governance. Doing so successfully will require heavy investments in capacity-building for government actors to value and feel comfortable managing and sustaining participatory spaces and in skills to bring forward the kind of governance needed to build resilience against the next pandemic.

Health system performance assessment: a primer for policy-makers

This policy brief is one of a new series to meet the needs of policy-makers and health system managers. The aim is to develop key messages to support evidence-informed policy-making and the editors will continue to strengthen the series by working with authors to improve the consideration given to policy options and implementation.