Namisango, E, Ramsey, L, Dandadzi, A et al. (3 more authors) (2021) Data and information needs of policymakers for palliative cancer care: a multi-country qualitative study. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 21. 189. ISSN 1472-6947
Abstract
Background:
Despite regional efforts to address concerns, the burden of advanced cancer in Africa needs urgent attention. Widespread issues include late symptom presentation, inaccessibility of palliative care services, limited resources, poor data quality, disparity in data availability, and lack of stakeholder engagement. One way of helping to address these issues is by meeting the data and information needs of policymakers in palliative cancer care.
Aims:
To explore the views of policymakers regarding data availability, data gaps and preferred data formats to support policy and decision making for palliative cancer care in Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Methods:
A secondary analysis of interview data collected as part of a cross-sectional qualitative study that aimed to explore the data and information needs of patients, policymakers and caregivers in Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Framework analysis, guided by the MEASURE evaluation framework, was used to qualitatively analyse the data.
Results:
Twenty-six policymakers were recruited. The policymakers data and information concerns are aligned to the MEASURE evaluation framework of data and information use and include; assessing and improving data use (e.g. low prioritisation of cancer); identifying and engaging the data user (e.g. data processes); improving data quality (e.g. manual data collection processes); improving data availability (e.g. data accessibility); identifying information needs (e.g. what is ‘need to know’?); capacity building in core competencies (e.g. skills gaps); strengthening organisational data demand and use (e.g. policy frameworks); monitoring, evaluating and communicating of data demand and use (e.g. trustworthiness of data).
Conclusions:
We present evidence of data sources, challenges to their access and use, guidance on data needs for policymakers, and opportunities for better engagement between data producers, brokers and users. This framework of evidence should inform the development of strategies to improve data access and use for policy and decision making to improve palliative cancer services.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
Keywords: | Cancer; palliative care; Sub-Saharan Africa; policymaker; decision making |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Medicine (Leeds) > Leeds Institute of Health Sciences (Leeds) > Nuffield Centre for International Health and Development (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number MRC (Medical Research Council) MR/S014535/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 08 Jun 2021 11:07 |
Last Modified: | 14 Sep 2023 08:31 |
Published Version: | https://bmcmedinformdecismak.biomedcentral.com/art... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BMC |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s12911-021-01555-1 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:174706 |