From Local Action to Global Policy: A Comparative Policy Content Analysis of National Policies to Address Musculoskeletal Health to Inform Global Policy Development.

Background: Global policy to guide action on musculoskeletal (MSK) health is in a nascent phase. Lagging behind other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) there is currently little global policy to assist governments to develop national approaches to MSK health. Considering the importance of comparison and learning for global policy development, we aimed to perform a comparative analysis of national MSK policies to identify areas of innovation and draw common themes and principles that could guide MSK health policy.

Methods: Multi-modal search strategy incorporating a systematic online search targeted at the 30 most populated nations; a call to networked experts; a specified question in a related eDelphi questionnaire; and snowballing methods. Extracted data were organised using an framework adapted from the World Health Organization (WHO) Building Blocks and further inductive coding. Subsequently, texts were open coded and thematically analysed to derive specific sub-themes and principles underlying texts within each theme, serving as abstracted, transferable concepts for future global policy.

Results: The search yielded 165 documents with 41 retained after removal of duplicates and exclusions. Only three documents were comprehensive national strategies addressing MSK health. The most common conditions addressed in the documents were pain (non-cancer), low back pain, occupational health, inflammatory conditions, and osteoarthritis. Across eight categories, we derived 47 sub-themes with transferable principles that could guide global policy for: service delivery; workforce; medicines and technologies; financing; data and information systems; leadership and governance; citizens, consumers and communities; and research and innovation.

Conclusion: There are few examples of national strategic policy to address MSK health; however, many countries are moving towards this by documenting the burden of disease and developing policies for MSK services. This review found a breadth of principles that can add to this existing work and may be adopted to develop comprehensive system-wide MSK health approaches at national and global levels.