ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an alternative to the history of evidence-based policy (EBP) at the World Health Organization (WHO) as presented by Christopher Murray and colleagues, by showing that its emergence was neither natural nor inevitable. It also shows that Murray and colleagues did not simply transfer evidence-based medicine principles to global health policy arena. Gro Harlem Brundtland's proclamation of the dawn of a new evidence-based policy era introduces the 2003 Report on Health Systems Performance Assessment, edited by Christopher Murray and David Evans and prepared largely by their team from the WHO's Evidence and Information for Policy (EIP) unit. Both World Bank's increasingly powerful engagement and Gates' ascent as a lavish and highly influential donor played important roles in changing landscape of international health development in 1990s. The key document produced by the EIP unit was the World Health Report (WHR) 2000, aimed at providing policy-makers with 'evidence' on how health systems worldwide performed, and how this could be improved.
