International Experiences with Co-Production and People Centredness Offer Lessons for Covid-19 Responses

This article highlights lessons that can be learned for working with communities to find feasible and acceptable solutions to healthcare concerns from experiences in low and middle income countries. Key messages:

• For too long, health research and the development of health policies and interventions have been done to, and not with, communities and individuals, often leading to failure
• The covid-19 pandemic has shown the importance of strengthening the co-production of health research and provision of health services by embedding a people centred approach at all levels of healthcare in all countries
• To build back better, researchers and policy makers need to rethink how to involve communities in co-production of research, knowledge, and health systems
• Power dynamics between different groups create barriers that must be dealt with if progress is to be made