For many years, the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) has pioneered capacity building in operational research. While there are many resources, a written, comprehensive guide has not been available.
The Union has developed the second edition of Operational Research to Improve Health Services: A practical guide for protocol development, data capture and analysis, scientific writing, publishing and translation of evidence to policy and practice and has completely revised and updated the content of the guide published in 2013.
In its 15 chapters the guide particularly aims to build the skills of researchers in public health programmes, by:
- Improving understanding of operational research in the context of public health research.
- Providing practical step-by-step guidance to develop an operational research proposal, obtain the necessary ethics approval, capture and analyse data and prepare a paper for publication in peer-reviewed journals.
- Explaining the process of responding to peer review with the aim of successful publication.
- Providing information about how to communicate research findings to decision makers and use local evidence to impact on policy and practice.
- Providing advice on how to embed operational research in disease control programmes within the Ministries of Health.
The target audience consists of healthcare professionals who are actively engaged in implementing disease control programmes and other health services and who are interested in conducting operational research to improve health system performance and health care delivery.
This guide also captures the SORT IT course material in a narrative form and can act as a source for pre-course reading and post-course reference material for participants and future facilitators who are interested in replicating SORT IT courses in their settings.
The guide was developed by a writing team from The Union's Centre for Operational Research, consisting of Anthony D Harries, Ajay MV Kumar, Divya Nair, Srinath Satyanarayana and Pruthu Thekkur.