Africa Health Discourse is an independent health policy institute working in Ghana and across Africa. We translate public health evidence into policy insight, and use dialogue to connect it to how health systems actually work.
Why AHeD exists
The challenge is not only disease burden. It is the limited institutional space linking research, policy processes, implementation realities and citizen perspectives.
Africa continues to face major public health challenges: a continued burden of communicable diseases, a rising burden of noncommunicable diseases, and significant gaps in access to quality care. These pressures are compounded by persistent health system weaknesses across many countries.
Yet across many settings, research uptake for health policymaking remains limited. Common barriers include weak stakeholder engagement, inadequate dissemination platforms, and poor contextualisation of evidence. Implementation challenges deepen the problem further: weak sustainability planning, limited system support and inadequate feedback mechanisms undermine the continuity, scale-up and long-term impact of health interventions.
Together these challenges highlight an important institutional gap: the limited availability of independent platforms that can translate public health evidence into policy-relevant insight, support implementation learning, and foster informed dialogue across policymakers, researchers, practitioners, civil society and communities.
AHeD seeks to fill this gap.
of countries in the WHO African Region had an active knowledge translation platform in 2022, down from 59% in 2018.
Source
WHO Regional Committee for Africa
Progress report on research for health: a strategy for the African Region, 2016–2025
From dialogue to action
Most institutes list the events they have held. We publish what was agreed in the room, who owns it, and when it falls due, so anyone can check whether the dialogue went anywhere.
Our first dialogue is being scheduled. Its record of each agreed action, with its owner, due date and status, will be published here and on the dialogue's own page.
How we work
We choose topics where decisions are actually being made. We synthesise the evidence and translate it into something a policymaker can act on. We convene the people who have to deliver it. And we record what was agreed, so the next cycle starts from what the last one learned.
Stage 1 of 4
We curate and synthesise evidence on priority health issues, chosen from stakeholder demand and from where decisions are actually approaching. Complex research and technical information become insight a policymaker can use.
See our publicationsStage 2 of 4
Evidence is translated into policy briefs, reform notes, advisory memos and implementation guidance, timed to the reviews and planning cycles they are meant to inform.
Our three themesStage 3 of 4
We convene policymakers, researchers, practitioners and communities around real decision points, combining technical evidence with direct experience of how delivery works in practice.
Upcoming eventsStage 4 of 4
Every engagement produces agreed follow-up actions, which we publish with an owner and a due date. What implementation teaches then feeds back into the next cycle of evidence.
How AHeD worksSelect a stage on the diagram
Our work
Africa's ability to define, finance, govern and sustain its own health priorities, driven by African-led solutions rather than excessive dependence on external actors.
The SDG era is ending. Africa needs to shape what replaces it, rather than respond to it once it is already written.
Technology, climate change and changing population needs are reshaping health systems faster than policy is adapting.
Our vision
An Africa where health systems are responsive, equitable, and shaped by credible evidence and meaningful dialogue.
Latest
How AHeD aligns convening with policy reviews, planning cycles and programme redesigns, and why the timing of a dialogue matters as much as its content.
A synthesis of what is known about why health research fails to reach decision-making, and what the evidence says about closing the distance between the two.
Three questions that any credible plan for domestic health financing has to answer, and what the current evidence suggests about each of them.
A dialogue on how climate change is reshaping health systems in Ghana and across Africa, and what policy and institutional responses the evidence supports.
A conversation with young people on what health sovereignty means in practice: who finances Africa's health priorities, who decides them, and how the next generation shapes that agenda.
The people
Dr Emmanuel Ankrah Odame
Board Chair
Dr Anna Yesunyonam Adjabeng
Executive Director
Dr Priscilla Akyaa Kyei-Baffour
Lead, Research, Policy and Programmes
Dr Doreen Appiah-Num
Lead, Partnerships and Resource Mobilisation
Beatrice Owusu Agyemang
Lead, Communications and Engagement
AHeD Newsletter
Occasional. A few times a year, when we publish something or convene an event. No other mail.
