CR20039 Review of the Health Systems Research Initiative

***THIS IS NOT A CALL FOR COMPETITION*** This award was made under BEIS Research & Evaluation Framework CR150025 - LOT3 The Department for International Development (DFID), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Wellcome jointly fund the Health Systems Research Initiative (HSRI). All the funders are committed to supporting world-class research with high potential for impact on policy and practice.

Launched in 2013 this programme aims to generate world class and cutting-edge research that addresses key questions on strengthening and improving health systems in developing countries. The programme's aims are to fund methodologically rigorous, high quality research that will: 1.

Generate evidence on how to strengthen health systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). 2. Use a health systems approach to inform the delivery of evidence-based interventions or health system reforms. 3.

Provide evidence that is of direct relevance to decision makers and practitioners in the field. 4. Engender capacity development in health policy and systems research amongst both research users and producers of evidence.

There have so far been six annual calls for proposals under the HSRI. Typically, around £5million is available for funding proposals per year.

Innovative proposals are sought from across the public health, social and biomedical sciences and must clearly identify what health system challenge is being addressed. The objectives of the review are: - To provide information on whether and how the scheme delivers on its core aim of generating high quality, internationally competitive research which addresses key questions on strengthening and improving health systems in LMICs - To investigate whether there are outcomes and impacts from research funded by the scheme; to explore and describe what barriers and facilitators there are to achieving impact, and how future impact can be maximised. - To provide the funders with case studies representative of the work funded under the scheme that can be used to demonstrate the range of outcomes and impact. - To provide guidance to the funders on future monitoring, evaluation and learning for the scheme. - As part of the evaluation the funders would welcome a review and update of the Theory of Change for the scheme