20 February 2019: Evidence for Children Roundtable Report, written for UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, Campbell Collaboration and International Rescue Committee via Scriptoria Sustainable Development Communications.
Quality evidence is a key driver of positive change in children’s lives. Exciting developments in evidence synthesis are paving the way for a richer, more robust and more extensive evidence base, as researchers, advocates, policy makers and development and humanitarian practitioners work towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Campbell Collaboration and the International Rescue Committee organized an Evidence for Children Roundtable in June 2018. The aim was to explore how to improve coordination among those interested in enhancing evidence-informed decision making for child welfare.
This report presents the crucial debates held at the Roundtable while also serving as a first call to action for those who work in the field of child welfare.
To realize the vision of achieving meaningful impact in children’s lives through evidence-informed action, stakeholders agreed on the importance of facilitating a discussion on the need to build a community of practice or network to concert efforts around five core themes:
- Invest in evidence and gap maps, which are a vital tool in enhancing the evidence architecture;
- Identify urgent evidence gaps to be filled by evidence synthesis and new primary research;
- Create demand for evidence among users internally and among policy and decision makers, using evidence synthesis and mapping to make evidence accessible and understandable;
- Create shared research agendas to maximize resources, to generate evidence strategically, and to unite evidence supply and demand to ensure evidence is institutionalized into the policy and programming cycle;
- Enhance the ability of children to participate in research, to ensure that children have a voice in decision making. Read more