Principal Investigator: Elias Mossialos
Start Date: 05 Decemebr 2016
End Date: 01 March 2017
Region: Middle East
Countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi, Qatar and United Arab Emirates
Keywords: global health, health policy

LSE were commissioned by the UK government to carry out a scoping exercise to explore the possibility of establishing an equivalent to the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies in the Gulf region.

LSE was a founding partner of the European Observatory and remains one of its academic leads, and the UK government is one of the partner governments involved.

The proposed “Gulf Health Policy Observatory” would seek to support the collection of and access to reliable data to inform health care policy development in the Gulf region by working with governments to develop data and analysis on six Gulf states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi, Qatar and UAE) and providing written analysis and policy dialogues to discuss key issues.

Its primary aims would be to inform and promote evidence based health policy making and to foster long-term partnerships between health stakeholders in the region and those in the UK.

LSE conducted interviews with a range of public and private stakeholders in the UK and in the Gulf to better understand how a Gulf Health Policy Observatory could meet their needs and complement existing activities.

The brief was to conduct a scoping exercise to explore the demand for, and likely format such an initiative might take and to prepare a terms of reference document for an Observatory and an assessment of the pros and cons of moving forward with the project.

The final report also included a scoping review of current healthcare priorities in the region.