The bumpy road to better health: How embedded research strengthened health services in Ghana

In the early 1990s, an experiment in Navrongo in northern Ghana looking at how best to structure primary care in rural areas of the country helped to enshrine the role of embedded research in Ghana’s approach to health systems strengthening. Based on the results of the experiment, they scaled up Community-based Health Planning and Services (locally known as CHPS) into other regions – but that is where the problems started. The programme roll out was uneven and the Ghana Health Service commissioned more research to understand what was going on. They discovered that, steps in the roll out, like the all-important community engagement, were being overlooked or skipped. They have now established three learning sites across the country to help ensure the programme stays on track and is tailored to the needs of local communities in these different regions. Presented as a ‘digital longform’, the multimedia story provides an in-depth look at how Ghana’s embedded research programme has evolved and it outlines five steps that were important for its development. The story was jointly produced with the Ghana Health Service and supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

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The bumpy road to better health: how embedded research strengthened health services in Ghana. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019 (WHO/HIS/HSR/19.2). Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.