The South East Asia Regional webinar on Knowledge Translation Management Lessons from COVID-19 research-to-policy

Background 

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the urgent need to strengthen capacity for knowledge translation across  the  world. The  collective  experience during  the  pandemic has also provided  an  unprecedented opportunity to assess the evidence-policy-society nexus. Notably, the pandemic has had an unequal impact across  regions,  revealing  variations  in  terms  of  weaknesses  in  preparedness,  response  capacities,  and knowledge  translation  capacity. To  take  stock  of  and  explore  the  lessons  learned  during  this pandemic, WHO plans to organize the Global Evidence-to-Policy Summit that will be held on 15–17 November 2021. The Global Summit ultimately is expected to chart the way forward for evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM)  during  the  evolving  of  Covid-19  pandemic and in  a  post-COVID-19  world. There  is  a  need  to contextualize the way forward, taking variations across regions as noted above into account. Thus, to take stock  of  and  explore  the  lessons learned  from  the  South  East  Asia  region during  the  pandemic,  the organization of a WHO SEARO Regional event on COVID-19 research-to-policy lessons learned is being proposed. 

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Goal 

The regional event will bring together researchers and policy-makers from the South East Asia region to identify  common  challenges,  share  lessons  learned, identify the  gaps, and  provide  recommendations  to advance evidence-informed decision-making in the region. 

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Objectives 

1. Identify key lessons learned on the evidence-policy-society interfaces and catalyze learning for those engaged  in evidence-to-policy  process  (producing, acquiring,  synthesizing,  brokering,  and using knowledge) in the region.

2. Advance the institutionalization of evidence-informed policy-making and strengthen partnerships and collaboration at the regional level. 

3. Chart the way forward in the region for evidence-informed decision-making during the evolving Covid-19 pandemic and in a post pandemic world.