Health Policy and Planning’s Top 10 articles in 2020

Health Policy and Planning publishes health policy and systems research focusing on low- and middle-income countries. The journal consists of four sections; Health Systems Research, Health Economics, Health Policy Processes and Implementation Research and Evaluation.

2020 was an extraordinary and challenging year with the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the world, workloads and ways of working shifting to new norms and journal submissions continuing to rise. At Health Policy and Planning in 2020, we published another two supplements with popular podcasts with authors on Health Systems Research Mentoring: Supporting early career women in LMICs and Innovations in Implementation Research in LMICs, new Research Collections including Evidence to inform the COVID-19 Response and a collection In Memory of Professor Val Curtis. Our editors processed over 960 submissions (not including revised submissions) and published 140 articles. Our impact factor remained steady at 2.704 providing us with a 5-year impact factor of 3.154 and placing us 18^th out of 87 within the Health Policy & Services category.

Below you can find our top 10 most cited, downloaded and most accessed content in the past year from content published in 2020 and we look forward to another fruitful and innovative year in 2021.

Top 10 Cited Papers

1. On discount rates for economic evaluations in global health [Link]
2. Providers’ perceptions of disrespect and abuse during childbirth: a mixed-methods study in Kenya [Link]
3. Estimating a cost-effectiveness threshold for health care decision-making in South Africa [Link]
4. Understanding fragility: implications for global health research and practice [Link]
5. Community engagement for health system resilience: evidence from Liberia’s Ebola epidemic [Link]
6. Maternal health after Ebola: unmet needs and barriers to healthcare in rural Sierra Leone [Link]
7. Yes, no, maybe so: the importance of cognitive interviewing to enhance structured surveys on respectful maternity care in northern India [Link]
8. The political economy of universal health coverage: a systematic narrative review [Link]
9. Expanding the use of community health workers in urban settings: a potential strategy for progress towards universal health coverage [Link]
10. The development of hospital accreditation in low- and middle-income countries: a literature review [Link]

Top 10 Downloaded Papers

1. Health system resilience: a literature review of empirical research [Link]
2. What role can health policy and systems research play in supporting responses to COVID-19 that strengthen socially just health systems? [Link]
3. On discount rates for economic evaluations in global health [Link]
4. Factors influencing the scale-up of public health interventions in low- and middle-income countries: a qualitative systematic literature review [Link]
5. Maternal health after Ebola: unmet needs and barriers to healthcare in rural Sierra Leone [Link]
6. Community engagement for health system resilience: evidence from Liberia’s Ebola epidemic [Link]
7. Yes, no, maybe so: the importance of cognitive interviewing to enhance structured surveys on respectful maternity care in northern India [Link]
8. Social values and health systems in health policy and systems research: a mixed-method systematic review and evidence map [Link]
9. The political economy of universal health coverage: a systematic narrative review [Link]
10. Expanding the use of community health workers in urban settings: a potential strategy for progress towards universal health coverage [Link]

Top 10 Altmetric Scoring Papers

1. Providers’ perceptions of disrespect and abuse during childbirth: a mixed-methods study in Kenya [Link]
2. The state of diet-related NCD policies in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Tunisia and Vietnam: a comparative assessment that introduces a ‘policy cube’ approach [Link]
3. Social values and health systems in health policy and systems research: a mixed-method systematic review and evidence map [Link]
4. Intersectoral (in)activity: towards an understanding of public sector department links between water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and childhood undernutrition in South Africa [Link]
5. Health system resilience: a literature review of empirical research [Link]
6. What will it cost to prevent violence against women and girls in low- and middle-income countries? Evidence from Ghana, Kenya, Pakistan, Rwanda, South Africa and Zambia [Link]
7. Shocks, stress and everyday health system resilience: experiences from the Kenyan coast [Link]
8. ‘Do you trust those data?’—a mixed-methods study assessing the quality of data reported by community health workers in Kenya and Malawi [Link]
9. The EVITA framework for evidence-based mental health policy agenda setting in low- and middle-income countries [Link]
10. Policy Process And Non-State Actors’ Influence On The 2014 Mexican Soda Tax  [Link]