caption Credit: UN Women/ Gaganjit Singh (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Social Science Approaches for Research and Engagement in Health Policy and Systems (SHAPES)

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The Social Science Approaches for Research and Engagement in Health Policy and Systems (SHAPES) Thematic Working Group (TWG) convenes discussions and activities to strengthen and raise the profile of social science approaches for research and engagement within health policy and systems research (HPSR).

SHAPES was launched in 2011 and has developed into a diverse and active community of practice including academic, policymaker and practitioner members from both LMIC and HIC settings. Members have varied interdisciplinary and praxis backgrounds, but a shared conviction that social science has an important role in HPSR and in health systems strengthening.

We seek to build connections between health system actors (researchers, policymakers, health care managers, educators, civil society, ‘community’, the media, and donors), and between existing networks. SHAPES is therefore a diverse TWG that connects members working on and interested in different perspectives and disciplines. Members come from different geographic regions, linguistic and cultural backgrounds, practitioners and researchers, those brand new to the idea of an HPSR field, and those that have been part of the initial field-building experience.

Across this diversity there is a common commitment to the promotion of research, advocacy and intervention approaches that are sensitive to context, amplify voices on the margins, and generate knowledge for real-world change in health policy and systems. In SHAPES, diversity, equity, and transformation are taken very seriously, as areas of research interest and as a shared value.

Objectives

  • Strengthen and raise the profile of social science approaches within the wider field of HPSR
  • Foster interaction and build relationships between practitioners, academics and policymakers to strengthen the production and utilization of knowledge for health systems strengthening
  • Stimulate learning, innovation and capacity building, in particular for under-resourced researchers
  • Support the broader development of HSG and build connections between HSG members.

Activities

SHAPES has an active Google Group where members circulate resources and engage in dialogue on social science issues in HPSR. Regular activities include:

  • Sharing of information, ideas, experiences and opportunities within the TWG – facilitated by newsletters and shared emails, webinars and journal clubs
  • Engaging in currently topical issues – through Conversation Groups led by teams of SHAPES members (current Conversation Groups include: Complexity Science and Systems Thinking, Power, LGBTQI, History, Working Across Disciplines, Policy Analysis, and Participatory Action Research)
  • Engaging outside the TWG – through supported publication activities, blogs and webinars
  • Support of the broader HSG society – supporting HSG activities, symposia, and connecting to other TWGs.
News and views

News and views

Access the latest blog posts and news items from the SHAPES TWG.

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Facilitators

Jill Olivier

Jill Olivier

Chair

Ateeb Ahmad Parray

Ateeb Ahmad Parray

Co-Chair

Apurva Kumar Pandya

Apurva Kumar Pandya

Coordinator

Jill Olivier

Jill Olivier

Chair

Dr Jill Olivier is an Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town, School of Public Health and Family Medicine, in the Health Policy and Systems Division. There, half her time is spent teaching Health Policy and Systems, convening the Health Systems Track of the MPH program, and supervising masters and PHD students. The other half of her time is spent coordinating and conducting research. She has been the PI of several multi-country studies, and has research experience across Africa, as well as in the Asia-Pacific and Americas. She is currently the Chair of the Public Health Association of South Africa’s Special Interest Group in Health Systems, and an active member of Health Systems Global. Jill has a disciplinary background in the Social Sciences and Humanities (in particular Development Studies, History and Interdisciplinary Studies), and applies these within HPSR, particularly in areas of ‘intersection’ (integrating non-state providers, community systems, intersectorality and interdisciplinarity), research integrity, history, communication and culture. Her active grants focus on health systems responsiveness, resilience and migration.

Ateeb Ahmad Parray

Ateeb Ahmad Parray

Co-Chair

Ateeb Ahmad Parray is a global health researcher based in Bangladesh at BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University. He works in the areas of gender, sexual and reproductive health, humanitarian emergencies, intersectionality, health systems and health policy with a special focus on vulnerable and marginalized populations including urban informal settlement dwellers and displaced populations. Ateeb serves as the Country Director (Bangladesh) of the STAR Scholars network which envisions to advance global social mobility by using research and advocacy. He is also an active member of the Gender and COVID-19 initiative, where he co-leads the 'intersectionality' and 'humanitarian emergencies' sub-groups respectively. Ateeb holds a Masters degree in Social Sciences from the University of Dhaka and a Masters degree in Public Health from BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University.

Apurva Kumar Pandya

Apurva Kumar Pandya

Coordinator

Apurva-kumar is a Health Psychologist and currently working as an Economic Health Specialist at Regional Resource Centre for Health Technology Assessment, Indian Institute of Public Health Gandhinagar (IIPH-G), Gujarat, India. He has worked in the domain of HIV prevention, counselling, health behavior change, cost-effectiveness analysis, and worked with children, adolescents and LGBTH (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Hijra) population. He is also an active member of Gender and COVID-19 initiative. His interests include broadly attempting to answer how individual behaviors are shaped by psychological, sociocultural, and political contexts; and how technology, gender and complex socio-cultural structures influences healthy or unhealthy behaviours, and uptake of proposed or implemented policies and healthcare services. He holds masters in Clinical Psychology and doctorate in Human Development and Family Studies from The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Gujarat.

Publications and resources

SHAPES 2020 blog series

In the months leading up to the Sixth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (HSR2020) SHAPES members blogged about the Symposium's theme of "Re-imagining health systems for better health and social justice" through a social science lens.

Showcasing the contribution of social sciences to health policy and systems research

S. M. Topp, K. Scott, A. Lorena Ruano & K. Daniels

This collection of articles is presented by SHAPES, the thematic working group of Health Systems Global focused on social science approaches to research and engagement in health policy and systems. The issue aims to showcase how qualitative and theory-driven approaches can contribute to better promoting equity in health within the field of HPSR.

10 Best Resources on Power in Health Policy and Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Veena Sriram et al.

In order to facilitate greater engagement with the concept of power among researchers and practitioners in the health systems and policy realm, the authors share a broad overview of the concept of power, and list ten excellent resources on power in health policy and systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), covering exemplary frameworks, commentaries and empirical work. They undertook a two-stage process to identify these resources.

Reclaiming comprehensive public health

R. Loewenson, K. Accoe, N. Bajpai, et al.

In this piece, the authors highlight deficiencies and harms of a dominant biosecurity, authoritarian framing of public health. They argue for a comprehensive, participatory, inclusive public health approach that integrates rights, social dimensions and diverse sources of knowledge, evidence and innovation and that maintains equity as a critical goal.

Power and politics: the case for linking resilience to health system governance

S. M. Topp

Since the watershed moment of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa and again in the midst of the current COVID-19 crisis, the concept of health system resilience has been a recurring theme in global health discussions. Although most frequently used in the context of epidemic response, resilience has also been framed as a ‘key pillar’ of health, and invoked in high-level calls for countries to ‘lead the work on building health system resilience’. Yet, as the authors of one of several recent reviews observed, the concept of health systems resilience remains ‘highly confusing’ and ‘still polysemic’. What it means ‘depends on one’s perception, one’s discipline, one’s function and what one wants to achieve’. This editorial, from the perspective of a health policy and systems researcher, draws out and reflects on some of these tensions, and makes some suggestions about how we might achieve greater clarity.

Fair Publication of Qualitative Research in Health Systems: A Call by Health Policy and Systems Researchers

An open letter from Trisha Greenhalgh et al. to the editors of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) triggered wide debate by health policy and systems researchers globally on the inadequate recognition of the value of qualitative research and the resulting deficit in publishing papers reporting on qualitative research. This is a follow-up open letter/commentary, with 170 co-signatories.

Social sciences: vital to improving our understanding of health equity, policy and systems

K. Daniels, J. Hanefeld & B. Marchal

Founded by the International Society for Equity in Health 15 years ago, the International Journal for Equity in Health (IJEqH) has from its inception been committed to redressing not just health inequity, but also inequity in the publishing of research on health. An editorial marking the society’s 10th anniversary remarked that “In particular the conferences and the journal have both provided a voice to researchers from low and middle income countries, giving life and embodiment to the values of inclusion, action-based research, research-to policy processes, and the vital role of civil society in strengthening action for health equity.” This commitment to giving voice to diversity was clear to the members of SHAPES, a thematic working group of Health Systems Global, when, in July 2016, the Journal published an open letter from our members and affiliate group members, critiquing the lack of publishing space given to qualitative research in many academic journals.