Call for Technical Support Centre: Health Systems Impact Modelling Consortia

These consortia will play a critical role in developing learning ecosystems of policy-makers, national- and global-level researchers and development partners to tackle the next frontiers in health systems modelling for impact. These learning ecosystems will serve to understand how the use of modelling approaches can best inform health systems resource allocation decisions towards stronger health systems in LMICs. This is not a call for research projects.

The Alliance aims to bring together national- and global-level researchers, development partners and decisionmakers to foster the creation of innovative ecosystems at national and global levels to nurture the development of modelling approaches and techniques to measure the impact of health systems strengthening (HSS) interventions on the provision of essential health services, including in primary health care settings.

Specific Tasks of the Technical Support Centre

• Conducting two scoping reviews to systematically examine the literature related to health systems impact modelling. One of these reviews will focus on examining existing quantitative and qualitative modelling approaches that have sought to understand how investments in health systems strengthening link to desired outcomes. The second review will:
  • identify barriers in leveraging modelling approaches to inform HSS resource allocation decisions in the past and how these might be overcome; and
  • assess the types of data available for use at national or subnational levels in LMICs for this purpose.
• Engaging closely with the Alliance Secretariat to facilitate an in-person consultative workshop (currently expected in June 2024) bringing together a range of stakeholders from policy and research at global and national levels. This workshop will enable dialogue with policymakers to identify what they see as the questions that health systems modelling can help to answer and potential sources of data at national and subnational levels.
• Co-developing a request for proposals with the Alliance Secretariat inviting research institutions from select LMICs to implement modelling exercises to address policy-maker questions identified through the consultative workshop.
• Providing technical oversight and guidance to selected research institutions within three LMICs to implement the modelling exercises over a two-year period. This includes:
  • working with the selected research institutions in-country to identify a consortium of national-level stakeholders (including policy-makers, researchers in health systems and those with modelling expertise) that will provide technical oversight to the modelling exercises and generate country buy-in;
  • co-facilitating an initial in-person meeting of each of the national-level consortia;
  • providing remote technical support to the in-country research institution through regular meetings and webinars; and
  • facilitating virtual meetings across country teams to discuss findings, compare approaches and identify enablers and barriers to the implementation of modelling exercises in each country.
• Engaging closely with the Alliance Secretariat and the country research teams to share findings within countries as well as advocating with global health initiatives to incorporate these approaches within grant applications, including through participation at events at major global health fora.
• Developing research outputs including peer-reviewed papers synthesizing lessons learned across the countries and providing support to country research teams to develop peer-reviewed papers reflecting on their own approaches and findings.

Eligibility and Selection Criteria

• To be eligible for consideration, the proposed technical support centre must:
  • Be based in an academic institution/university;
  • Have completed all sections of the proposal and adhered to maximum proposal length;
  • Have at least 50% of the named team members on the bid be women;
  • Have extensive experience in the development and use of modelling approaches to inform health policy and practice in LMICs, particularly around health systems strengthening efforts; and
  • The lead investigator must have an established record of peer reviewed journal articles around the use of modelling approaches in the area of health and health systems (minimum 20 articles).
• To be competitive, the technical support centre should be able to demonstrate the following in the proposal:
  • Have experience of using of modelling approaches in Asia and Africa. This includes involvement in efforts to strengthen capacities of these groups of stakeholders as well as dissemination of findings to them;
  • Have experience in the development of modelling applications (including data platforms) that can help policy-makers to better visualize data and potentially apply data to inform decision-making;
  • Have a track record of developing policy briefs and reports targeted at policy-makers;
  • At least one team member must have a demonstrated ability to bring together qualitative and quantitative research approaches to inform modelling exercises;
  • Have previous experience of engaging with United Nations agencies (including WHO), bilateral and multilateral partners and nongovernmental/civil society organizations; and
  • Provide a clear project plan outlining how it will support the Alliance Secretariat to implement the tasks outlined as well as how these activities will contribute to developing the learning ecosystems mentioned in the introduction to this document.
• The selection committee will also consider how the proposal responds to value for money.
• The technical support centre will be expected to engage closely with the Alliance Secretariat throughout the duration of the work programme.

For more information, visit Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research.