Strengthening evidence-informed policy-making in Israel’s health system: insights from a structured multi-stakeholder workshop

The need for evidence-informed policy-making (EIPM) has become crucial in addressing healthcare challenges, resource allocation and system accountability. EIPM integrates research evidence with contextual factors, stakeholder values and practical constraints to improve policy outcomes. This workshop aimed to explore the implementation of EIPM within Israel’s healthcare system, identify barriers to effective implementation and develop potential solutions to strengthen the integration of research evidence into health policy decisions. A structured, multi-stakeholder, deliberative workshop was convened by Israel’s National Institute for Health Policy Research. Active participants were allocated across three working groups to address different aspects of evidence-informed health policy. Working groups engaged in a structured problem-solving process to identify barriers, propose potential responses and select issues for further deliberation. Seventy-six active participants, alongside two non-voting media observers, attended the workshop. The workshop identified key barriers to effective EIPM, including mismatch between research outputs and policy-maker needs, limited translation-to-policy tools among researchers and insufficient connections between researchers and policy-makers. Potential responses included a national research–policy matchmaking platform, incentives for applied research, knowledge broker roles, phase-based evaluation requirements within research funding and training to strengthen researchers’ policy communication capacity. The structured deliberation generated a cross-sector, stakeholder-generated agenda that highlights the complexity of strengthening evidence-informed health policy and the interconnected nature of the proposed responses. The workshop illustrates how stakeholders across the research–policy interface translated internationally recognized challenges into operationally relevant potential responses. The agenda provides a basis for further development, implementation and evaluation of contextually appropriate approaches to strengthening EIPM in Israel.