Communities of Practice: the Missing Link for Knowledge Management on Implementation Issues in Low-Income Countries?

Tropical Medicine and International Health

doi:10.1111/j.1365-3156.2011.02794.x

volume 16 no 8 pp 1007–1014 august 2011

Viewpoint

Communities of practice: the missing link for knowledge management on implementation issues in low-income countries? ´
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Bruno Meessen1, Seni Kouanda2, Laurent Musango3, Fabienne Richard1, Valery Ridde2,4 and Agnes Soucat5
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Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium
IRSS, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
WHO-AFRO, Libreville, Gabon
University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada
African Development Bank, Tunis, Tunisia

Summary

The implementation of policies remains a huge challenge in many low-income countries. Several factors play a role in this, but improper management of existing knowledge is no doubt a major issue. In this article, we argue that new platforms should be created that gather all stakeholders who hold pieces of relevant knowledge for successful policies. To build our case, we capitalize on our experience in our domain of practice, health care financing in sub-Saharan Africa. We recently adopted a community of practice strategy in the region. More in general, we consider these platforms as the way forward for knowledge management of implementation issues. keywords knowledge management, user fee, community of practice, implementation science

Introduction
The 2000 Millennium Summit and the MDGs have created a strong momentum for programs and strategies addressing major health problems in low-income countries, at global, regional and country level. At global level, massive efforts have been made by the scientific community to clarify what interventions should be prioritised. The evidence is often robust (Jones et al. 2003; Campbell &
Graham 2006). At country level, several heads of state of sub-Saharan Africa – where the health care battle is most tense – have taken bold action to accelerate progress towards the health MDGs. In many countries, this trend only seems to

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