National Summit of Health and Population Scientists Issues Declaration on Health System Resilience

The Eighth National Summit of Health and Population Scientists in Nepal held in Kathmandu on April 10-12 has issued a nine-point declaration on Health System Resilience in Nepal. The three-day summit organized by Nepal Health Council was attended by government agencies, professional councils and associations, academic institutions, bilateral and multilateral agencies, private sectors, and individual scholars announced the declaration following a number of panel sessions and presentations on various themes related to health system resilience in Nepal. The theme of this year’s conference was Advancing Health Policy and Systems Research: Lessons for Resilient Health System in Nepal.

The summit declared that the delegates commit to facilitate in policy-making through scientific health research and evidence that strengthens adaptive, absorptive and transformative capacities in federal context; foster synergies in the domain of health to link research, academia and industries that boosts research uptake; promote biomedical, epidemiological, and clinical research by coordination with various stakeholders for effective adoption of clinical-based evidence in health policies and programs; collaborate, consolidate, and catalyze a multidimensional approach to implementation research for better public health outcomes; acknowledge and plan for potential threat of climate change, natural disaster and emerging infectious diseases by gathering information that supports analysis through new technologies; address the changing pattern of non-communicable diseases and its burden by promoting early prevention, risk reduction, diagnosis, and management; leverage research strategies and promote mutual reinforcement between pharmaceutical sectors to improve the quality of medicines; reinforce maternal, neonatal, and child health programs by underlying the importance of multilateral efforts to reduce mortality; and protect health rights of vulnerable population through gender equity and justice utilizing research data and policy.

The NHRC annually hosts such summits to generate knowledge through high-quality research and an evidence-based decision-making approach by fostering dialogue between researchers, implementers and policymakers.

A total of 31 national and 22 international experts were invited for a presentation at the summit. Some of the major areas covered in the summit were health system strengthening in the context of federalism under COVID-19, disease burden, provincial and local health services, governance and leadership, health systems and policy research, biomedical, epidemiology and clinical research, global health and implementation research, research ethics, drug research, maternal and newborn, child health and interdisciplinary research.

HERD International researchers had five oral presentations at the summit where two papers focused on health system and policy thematic area and 3 papers on the population health area.

More information about HERD International’s oral presentation

HERD International Researcher Awarded

Senior Research Fellow at HERD International Mr. Achyut Raj Pandey was awarded ‘NHRC Young Health Researcher Award-2021’ by Nepal Health Research Council on 12 April 2022, the last day of the summit. Young professionals below the age of 40 years with significant contributions to health and medical research are awarded each year at the national summit of Health and Population Scientists. The evaluation is done based on scientific publications.