Researchers: Think Like a Policymaker

by Eric Zuehlke, web communications manager

So, you’ve spent the past couple of years narrowing down your research question, developing your research model, collecting and analyzing data, conducting field work, and writing. Now your paper, with some major findings that can have a big impact on policy, is about to be published. Now what? How do you reach policymakers with your research? How can you affect change? These are fundamental questions being addressed by the PopPov network’s annual conference. The Honorable Joy Phumaphi, former minister of health of Botswana and vice president at the World Bank, focused her discussion on what to do and what not to do when approaching policymakers to be effective in her commentary on the close of the third day of the conference.

“You have to communicate in the same way they are thinking,” she said. Above all, policymakers, especially in low-income countries, are concerned with economic growth. In her experience, Phumaphi explained, they don’t see population growth as a major concern. In fact, since they want a larger market size to develop their economies, population growth can actually be beneficial. So framing the need for family planning services by connecting it population will not address their concerns. “You need to highlight benefits that address policymakers’ concerns, not your concerns,” said Phumaphi.

She gave a couple of examples from her own career.

When she was a principal auditor in Botswana, there was plenty of evidence that showed bringing reproductive health services to women will assist them in limiting family size, space their pregnancies, delay their first pregnancy, etc. So how did she and her colleagues communicate to policymakers, community leaders, and women to effectively expand reproductive health services? They didn’t focus on the benefits in terms of smaller family size. The focus was on the economic benefits. “We said when you bring these services closer to women, women will have more time to work on their farms, to looks after their children, reduce absenteeism in school, and increase household income. That sold the policy. Village chiefs were happy that women will now have more time to plow fields.”

Phumaphi further explained that in Botswana the benefits of family planning were communicated to policymakers by saying we a developing country, we need a skilled workforce, we need to educate every single Botswanan to develop as a country. “That’s how women became educated. It wasn’t an argument that we want to control our population and educate women so that they have less children. The argument was bringing women in as equal partners in national economic development. This led naturally to fewer children.”

“Communication is important. The concerns we have in Africa are concerns that can be addressed through the research we are doing,” Phumpari said. How to bring policymakers on board requires a specific communication strategy. The research agenda doesn’t need to change in order to be effective. The evidence is there. And the end results of communicating research in terms of policy change can be the same. It’s a matter of seeing through policymakers’ eyes and perspective and gauging which benefits will resonate most to them, politically and economically. To those of us working in public health and international development, the health or wellbeing benefits may be evidence enough to invest in family planning and reproductive health; to policymakers working with political and resource constraints, this may not be enough.

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