Regional capacity building for policy dialogue on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

Overview

Policy solutions such as legislative and regulatory interventions are critical to addressing important global public health problems at the population level. However, developing effective public health policy interventions requires technical skills around legal analysis, leveraging data and scientific evidence, and strategic advocacy which government officials often lack. This drives a public health action gap where evidence-based and cost-effective policies fail to be considered or are left on the shelf without effective advocacy, causing preventable death and suffering, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). There is an urgent need to address this gap by increasing the capacity of LMIC government public health officials to effectively develop, advocate and implement policy interventions.

A Policy Dialogue cycle with an additional Training-of-Trainer’s component was provided for up to 32 participants made up of WHO country office staff, government staff and consultants from seven countries in the WHO South-East Asia Region. This project was completed through a single arm of execution: the SRHR (Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights) Health Policy Accelerator.