Background: Evidence-Informed Policy-making (EIPM) requires individual and organizational knowledge, skills and attitudes articulated with contextual factors and needs. An EIPM competency profile was developed to support EIPM institutionalization in Brazilian context.
Objectives: To present process and results of the development of an EIPM competency profile for Brazilian context.
Methods: An authorship group, composed of Brazilian experts from different sectors, was established to add diversity of views, experiences and opinions. The authorship group discussed and defined, over six workshops held in 2021, from the macroproblems of EIPM in Brazilian context to key elements for the EIPM competency profile in Brazilian context. Development stages included the following: 1) creation of the authorship group, bringing together researchers, professionals with practical experience in EIPM-related fields, decision-makers and educators; 2) development of a rapid review on EIPM competence profiles to support initial discussions; 3) agreement on commitments and responsibilities; 4) discussion and outlining of related macro-problems and 5) outline of general and specific key knowledge, skills and attitudes to be incorporated into the EIPM competency profile.
Results: The development of the EIPM competence profile was guided by the following macroproblems: 1) decision-making processes are not systematic and transparent; 2) poorly developed institutional capacity for managing, translating and applying evidence and 3) incipient incorporation of scientific evidence into the process of formulating and implementing health policies. Based on subsidies and discussions carried out by the authoring group, we proposed a competence profile for EIPM in Brazilian context, including 42 specific and general key elements, distributed by professional area (Health policy and systems decision-making, Scientific Research, Civil Society, Knowledge Translation and Transversal field). These elements were systematized and presented in a structured framework.
Conclusions: This competency profile constitutes the first initiative to delimit the key competency elements to advance EIPM in Brazilian context and contributes to discussion and elaboration of curricula of courses of different levels, selection of professionals, evaluation of the professional performance, plan career advancement and guide the formation of learning communities in institutional environments, among other purposes.
Patient, public and/or healthcare consumer involvement: Different types of decision makers in health policy/systems, health professionals, researchers and citizens.