| Objective. The overall goal of this project is to understand the perspectives and attitudes of Argentine policymakers and health researchers regarding the use and impact of health research in policymaking in Argentina.;Background. Health research in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) faces a number of challenges including under investment, lack of capacity, lack of public demand, inadequate utilization and poor dissemination of results. Globally, health researchers and policymakers have recognized the need to carry out health research which is helpful and required to improve the management decisions and performance of national health systems. However, there is a dearth of evidence of policymakers' and health researchers' perceptions of evidence-based policymaking in LMIC, including Argentina.;Methods. This study uses a mixed methods approach to first investigate Argentine policymakers' and Argentine health researchers' perceptions of and roles in evidence-based health policymaking in Argentina through semi-structured, in-depth interviews. This qualitative phase is followed by the quantitative phase comprising a survey of Argentine health researchers.;Results. This study assesses the relationship between health researchers and policymakers and explores under what circumstances health research might be successfully translated into health policy. Barriers and facilitators to research use in policymaking were found to be nested within a hierarchical model including political governance, bureaucratic processes, institutions, communities of practice and, at the individual-level, researcher capacity and research availability. The development of a researcher-centric framework contributes to identifying opportunities for researcher involvement in policy processes.;Conclusions. The disconnect between health research and policymaking systems in Argentina, coupled with weakened technical capacity on the part of decision-makers and the perception of fewer research resources available, underscores the difficulty in evidence informing health policymaking in Argentina. These findings provide insight into the perspectives of health researchers, an often-overlooked population involved in evidence-based policymaking, with implications for future knowledge translation activities in Argentina. This study identifies the facilitators to and barriers of building strong and policy-effective national health research systems, and lay the foundation for future researcher-oriented knowledge translation activities in Argentina. |
