EVIPNet Africa's first series of policy briefs to support evidence-informed policymaking

EVIPNet (Evidence-Informed Policy Network) Africa—a network of World Health Organization (WHO)-sponsored knowledge-translation (KT) platforms in seven sub-Saharan African countries—was launched at a meeting in Brazzaville, Congo, in March 2006 (1;2). EVIPNet Africa can trace its origins to resolutions from both the Ministerial Summit on Health Research (November 2004) and the World Health Assembly (May 2005) (10;11), the spirit of which was re-affirmed at the Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health (November 2008) (13). The World Health Assembly called for “establishing or strengthening mechanisms to transfer knowledge in support of evidence-based public health and health care delivery systems and evidence-based related policies” (10). EVIPNet Africa can trace its inspiration to a more local development: the preparatory work that led to the establishment of the East African Community–sponsored Regional East African Community Health (REACH) Policy initiative, a KT platform involving Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda (and more recently Burundi and Rwanda as well). REACH Policy is now part of the EVIPNet Africa family.