Embedded research to advance primary health care.

Realising renewed efforts to accelerate progress towards universal health coverage, manage health emergencies and create healthier populations requires integrated action on system-wide challenges. One of the best ways to do this is to focus on primary health care (PHC). Advancing PHC needs the support of a robust learning agenda—encompassing questions on how to improve both essential and emergency services, engage and empower communities and address the broader determinants of health through multisectoral action. Nowhere has the importance of learning been more compellingly exposed than during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, where the ability of countries to learn from experience has often determined the success or failure of their responses. How research informs policy and action is variable, and in low- and middle-income countries, the contribution of research to decision-making is often limited. Traditionally, PHC research priorities are determined by funders or researchers based in high-income countries.1 This has constrained the utility of this …