HEW2017 and the lack of Evidence Based Practice in Humanitarian Crises

Last week, the Health in Humanitarian Crisis Centre at LSHTM hosted an event in collaboration with Evidence Aid regarding the lack of Evidence Based Practice in Humanitarian Crises. The panel discussion is part of a wider net of events during HEW2017 (Humanitarian Evidence Week 2017) to highlight topics related to generation, use and dissemination of evidence in the humanitarian sector.

The panel discussion was chaired by Jeroen Jansen, of Evidence Aid, with speakers including Bayard Roberts, speaking on LSHTM’s RECAP project, Alice Obrecht, representing ALNAP (Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action) and Gareth Owen representing Save the Children.

The discussion was quite informative on the area of research and use of research in humanitarian crises response and epidemic response. There was also particular highlighting of the RECAP project currently being run at LSHTM, which works to build research capacity and knowledge to help support preparedness and response to humanitarian crises and epidemics.

The discussion after the panel spoke also highlighted the current lack of information that is generated and collected by various NGO’s undertaking projects around the world. Another issue emphasized by the panel is around accountability in this sector and the need for NGO’s to have transparent accountability procedures to ensure their values are being met and understood.

This leads to the question of how data, once it has been generated, can then be used in practice. One needs to ensure the outcomes, especially from the RECAP project can be applied to situations around the world to generate change.

As someone who in the future wants to work in this sector, it is disheartening to see the lack of evidence based practice, and indeed the acceptance of this by most agencies and organisations around the world. RECAP as a project hopes to change that, and what would be truly beneficial is to produce guidelines aimed at setting up new projects in relatively high paced situations such as the time of crises. As was pointed out by both Gareth Owen and Alice Obrecht, there are often many factors which would act on these guidelines and one cannot rely simply on these guidelines to produce perfect efficient systems in each situation it is used. Instead the aim must be to produce a rough set of guidelines which would act as a starting point for different situations.

Overall the evening provided an illuminating discussion on the next steps regarding the future of evidence based practice in humanitarian crises.

To find out more about the RECAP project please follow this link; https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/recap.

Information on future events on during HEW2017 (Humanitarian Evidence Week 2017) can be found here; http://www.evidenceaid.org/events-and-training/hew/.