The WHO African Region: Research Priorities on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
Posted by Bukola Daike on May 19, 2021 at 7:40 am
Many policy makers deliberating on comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights services need reliable evidence to make choices that benefit women, adolescents, children and the wider society. While universal health coverage discourse provides an opportunity to expand access through evidence based interventions, many gaps exist. Research prioritization has proved to be very helpful in identifying relevant areas especially in constrained resource settings. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of the World Health Organization Africa Region research prioritization for sexual and reproductive health and rights. These priorities hope to guide the region for the next three years.
Methods: We used the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative approach to identify priority questions among many potential areas for research prioritization on sexual and reproductive health and rights. The implementation process was organized in three phases. The first phase involved sending out an online survey to various experts with experience in sexual and reproductive health rights. These questions were received by a technical team from World Health Organization headquarters for review. 634 questions were identified for potential research and grouped into 12 themes. The second phase involved experts who reviewed the questions. The team merged questions with duplications, removed the questions that were out of scope and finally refined the wordings. In the final phase, experts worked in groups to score and rank top ten priority questions for each of the 12 thematic areas.
Results: A list of 120 priority questions for sexual and reproductive health and rights were prioritized by 67 participants drawn from 16 organizations. Most of the priority research questions (45%) focused on the theme of gender-based violence, 35% prioritized services in sexual and reproductive health and rights in humanitarian settings while 15% prioritized preventing unsafe abortion. 5% of the participants prioritized cervical cancer prevalence, prevention and treatment as a thematic area out of the questions in the top 20 research priority questions.
Conclusions: Key priority research questions in sexual and reproductive health and rights were identified around five themes. The priority list will be of significance to World Health Organization regional Office for Africa and her stakeholders for the next three years.
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