Context

Well-organized and sustainable health systems are vital to ensure equitable access to effective health interventions. Yet, there is insufficient use of knowledge for enhancing health system performance for two main reasons:

• there is a gross lack of information on the performance of health systems and on how policies affect performance;
• even when knowledge is available, it is not necessarily known or used by policy-makers.

Research is a vital tool to support the processes of policy and systems development, implementation and evaluation.