Advanced Course on Health Information and Evidence for Policy-making (2018)

Analysis and report of participant response to the course held on 27 June–1 July 2017 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Advanced Course is a significant capacity-building activity of the WHO European Health Information Initiative (EHII), and is organized by the Division of Information, Evidence, Research and Innovation at WHO Regional Office for Europe. Although anecdotal evidence had indicated that past Advanced Courses were successful, the Division of Information, Evidence, Research and Innovation wanted a deeper understanding of how the course content and modes of delivery affected participant satisfaction and the Advanced Course’s capacity-building impact. Consequently, a set of quantitative and qualitative tools were used to survey and interview participants on the 2017 Advanced Course. Two qualitative methods were used on three sources of data. This combination of methods enabled the analyst to differentiate positive and negative comments, assess the relative importance of themes identified in the data, and investigate which content, lecturers, and modes of delivery were most successful and how the course might be improved.

Six major themes and 23 sub-themes were identified in the participants’ comments and interview responses. Eighty percent of the comments and 87% of the interview responses were positive. The remaining comments and interview responses were almost equally divided between neutrally expressed recommendations for the course and negative comments. The results describe a course that is well balanced between theoretical knowledge and practical application of that knowledge, with modules that build upon one another.