Knowledge is the foundation of high-performing health systems, successful policies, and achievement of national and regional health goals. Knowledge management has a big role to play, by encouraging continuous learning and sharing—and the application of that knowledge to services—leading to health systems that are responsive to patient and population needs.

In practice, knowledge management can take many forms. It includes activities that:

• help information flow between people, organizations, and countries so that they can share experiences and expertise,
• present information in ways that are easy for people to access, understand and apply to their context,
• nurture lasting practices of learning and sharing that are authentic to where people are.

When global health workforce members share what they know, and can find what they need, programs are able to reach their full potential and avoid repeating costly mistakes. This means better outcomes for individuals, communities, and health systems. 

Knowledge management can take on different forms depending on people’s needs and the challenges you’re trying to solve.  

• Bringing people together to ask questions and elicit tacit knowledge — or the know-how in people’s heads
• Conveying knowledge (or telling it) to defined groups of people
• Publishing and searching approaches to share explicit knowledge and allow people to pull the information they need, when they need it

When implemented successfully, knowledge management has lasting impact. Resources are optimized when countries and partners can practice evidence-based decision-making, learning, and adaptation. Public health programs that often have ambitious goals, but possess limited time, money, and human resources to execute the work, can rapidly learn what works and what does not and adapt their work.