The 1^st Regular Sectoral Council of Ministers of Health (5-8^th Aug 2005) and the 10^th Full Council of Ministers (EAC/CM10/Decision 34) on the 8-9^th Aug 2005 approved the establishment of the Regional East African Community Health (REACH) - Policy Initiative within the EAC Secretariat. This is pending the full legal status of the East African Health Research Commission (EAHRC) which will be the implementing agency for the REACH-Policy Initiative Project once fully operational.

The EAHRC/REACH-Policy Initiative Project will have designated National Focal Points and Country Nodes/Satellite Offices within each of the five EAC Partner States. 

Purpose of the Project:

The Regional East African Community Health-Policy Initiative (REACH) is an institutional mechanism or “knowledge broker” designed to link health researchers with policy-makers and other vital research-users. It connects these constituencies through shared and dynamic platforms that support, stimulate and harmonize evidence-based and -informed policymaking processes in East Africa. While the need to bridge the realms of health research, policy and practice has been long recognized, never before has there been such a large-scale, systematic attempt to apply the idea of knowledge brokerage. The REACH-Policy Initiative will be the world’s first regional attempt at knowledge translation using knowledge brokers. The initiative will be an integrated institutional mechanism operating within the newly established East African Health Research Commission (EAHRC), which will be a semi-autonomous institution of the East African Community (EAC).

REACH will serve researchers by harvesting, synthesizing, re-packaging, and communicating the policy-relevant evidence of their studies in user-friendly terms that stakeholders at many different levels can interact with and understand. REACH will also serve policymakers and other government officials by providing evidence, identifying gaps, setting priorities, and expressing their policy needs in the form of questions that can be investigated scientifically. REACH is above all a process of coordination and collaboration in health policy, bringing together key actors – from researchers to policymakers – to accelerate the development of effective and equitable health care delivery systems in the region, and therein addressing the vital issues of equity, access and equality between women and men. While galvanizing attention to health research at the regional level, REACH will also serve an essential function at the national level, bringing together key stakeholders to discuss, supply and demand key evidence intended for policy and implementation.

Though REACH has been functioning on a limited scale over the past year, an initial five-year project stage is proposed to test and further develop the concept of “brokering” evidence-informed policy.

The Results:

Products resulting from operations of the REACH-Policy Initiative will be processed and approved through established EAC Policy Organs and Institutions. The relevant EAC Organs include: the full Council of Ministers, the Sectoral Council of Ministers of Health, the Sectoral and Coordination Committees on Health. The relevant EAC Institutions include: EAHRC and the East African Legislative Assembly. (EALA)

The REACH-Policy Initiative will help ensure that health research information in East Africa is accessible, timely, credible, packaged in a user-friendly format, and relevant to the local context. The initiative will support platforms for continuing debate, and will build regional capacity for more productive links between health researchers, policy makers and practitioners. The project will accelerate the development of effective and equitable health care delivery systems in the region, and ultimately will result in healthier populations that are less vulnerable to preventable diseases or illnesses. Within this dynamic it will address issues of equity, access and equality between women and men.

Current Institutional Mechanisms:

The REACH Regional hub is based at the EAC Secretariat in Arusha, Tanzania and the country node offices are based at the respective National Health Research Institutions in each EAC Partner State. The REACH-Policy Initiative commenced activities in December 2006. Several donors provided small-scale assistance in its first year of operations to help it begin advocacy, fund-raising and demonstration of function (or “proving the concept”).

These include:

·         International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Core Support; US$177,000.

·         Swiss Tropical Institute; US$33,000 as support for male circumcision theme development.

·         WHO-Alliance Health Policy and Systems Research; US$31,000 for priority setting theme development.

·         Research Matters (a partnership between IDRC and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation) providing technical support worth US$28,000.