Table 2.

Facilitating factors and barriers to malaria research utilization for policy development

	Specific factors
Facilitating research uptake factors
Institutional factors	Global influence on the emphasis of evidence driven policies
	The establishment of the department of Research in Ministry of Health
	The revival of the Policy Development Unit (PDU) and the development of guidelines for policy development and analysis
	The availability of the National Health Research Agenda (NHRA)
	Availability of funding organization such as NCST, USPMI, and Global Fund
	Establishment of the Knowledge Translation Platform (KTP) and the Knowledge Translation Unit (KTU)
	Establishment of the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) in Malawi
	Technical Working Groups to discuss research, and annual research dissemination conferences
	Collaboration of the NMCP and research centres such as the Malaria Alert Centre (MAC)
Personal factors	Local Researchers trained in various malaria research disciplines
	Growing number of researchers interested in knowledge translation
Research factors	Availability of malaria research conducted in Malawi
	Availability of the NHRA that includes the malaria research agenda
	A position already established by WHO
Barriers to research uptake
Institutional factors	Lack of a platform on which researchers can engage with the public
	Lack of research capacity at the NMCP
	Politics
Personal factors–researchers	Lack of research communication skills to policy makers
	Focus on publishing and career advancement
	Lack of collaboration of researchers with policy makers
	Lack of collaboration among researchers of different disciplines
Personal factors–policy makers	Lack of time to find and read research articles
	Inability of research synthesis
	Lack of motivation and rigid to change
	Mistrust of research findings
Research factors	Research not addressing the country’s needs
	Funder driven research
	Unknown WHO policy position
	Access to malaria research and lack of a malaria research repository