Policymakers are responsible for formulating or amending policies at the community, regional, national or international level.
Collaborating with policymakers, building relationships and communicating results in the research process is crucial to ensuring that evidence is translated into policy and practice and achieves real-world impact.
Top tips for engaging policymakers
The GACD team has developed eight top tips for researchers when engaging with policymakers and influencing the policy process.
The GACD Upscaling Working Group published a paper Strengthening policy engagement when scaling up interventions targeting non-communicable diseases: insights from a qualitative study across 20 countries, which identifies challenges and facilitators to undertaking policy engagement and makes recommendations based on the experience of projects within the GACD Scale Up Research Programme.
Below is a list of more resources that describe how to encourage policymaker support at all stages of a research project. The context(s) in which the guidance is intended for use (i.e., high-income countries (HICs), low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and/or Indigenous communities) are indicated.
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This guide identifies ten steps towards an effective dissemination strategy for researchers to maximise the impact of their findings.
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A tool to facilitate dialogue with a range of relevant stakeholders, to help identify evidence considerations of policy makers. The TPoP can help researchers structure engagement with stakeholders to analyze the evidence underlying a given policy, the gaps in that evidence, and the nature of additional evidence needed. The TPoP tool can be used prior to research to identify key evidence needed to support policy decisions and/or at the point of evidence generation and dissemination.
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HICs
Overseas Development Institute
Researchers and policymakers often have different concepts of what constitutes good evidence. The RAPID Outcome Mapping Approach provides step-by-step guidance for researchers to become ‘policy entrepreneurs’ that successfully engage with policymakers.
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LMICs
How to communicate research for policy influence
Center for the Implementation of Public Policies Promoting Equity and Growth
Communicating research results can inform policies that best serve the interests of the public. This toolkit provides information about research communication to influence policies through the use of policy briefs, media, digital platforms, and other dynamic formats.
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LMICs
International Initiative for Impact Evaluations (3ie) and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI)
From institutional contexts to stakeholder analysis to budgets, this toolkit is designed to support researchers committed to engaging with stakeholders.
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A political analysis of the stakeholders involved in health policy implementation helps researchers better understand their interests and concerns. This article examines the challenges that arise in implementing health policies by examining the different stakeholder groups involved and giving tips on how to manage the groups and political processes.
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