NGOs are generally regarded as valued partners in health research for development, research being viewed as a broad process involving not only the production of knowledge, but also up-stream and down-stream activities needed for its relevance and effectiveness, such as priority setting and knowledge translation.
Furthermore, a small number of institutions mentioned priority setting and knowledge translation as part of their areas of involvement in HPSR.
NGOs are contributing at all stages of the research cycle, fostering the relevance and effectiveness of the research, priority setting, and knowledge translation to action.
Further research is needed to collaboratively advance pragmatic MCDA-based frameworks for appraisal of healthcare interventions, decisionmaking, priority setting and pragmatic knowledge translation.
This paper reports on the project design and progress and argues that there is a high need for research into legitimate and fair priority setting to improve the knowledge base for achieving sustainable improvements in health outcomes.
By understanding and valuing this experience-based knowledge, research priority setting, research study design, trial conduct, analysis of results and knowledge dissemination can be positively influenced.
However, there is limited knowledge on the extent to which CHWs are given opportunities to feed into health systems priority setting and bring their embedded knowledge to health systems debates' (4, p. 9).
This study makes five contributions to knowledge on priority setting.
Actors are therefore categorized based on team composition, skills and knowledge in priority setting.
Finally, this study highlighted the most important gaps in the knowledge for priority setting i.e. the shortage of hard evidence on effectiveness of health services.
