Health policy and systems research agendas in developing countries
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Health policy and systems research agendas in developing countries Miguel A Gonzalez-Block* Address: Manager Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research World Health Organization CH 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland Email: Miguel A Gonzalez-Block* - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 05 August 2004 Health Research Policy and Systems 2004, 2:6
doi:10.1186/1478-4505-2-6
Received: 06 February 2004 Accepted: 05 August 2004
This article is available from: http://www.health-policy-systems.com/content/2/1/6 © 2004 Gonzalez-Block; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Background: Health policy and systems research (HPSR) is an international public good with potential to orient investments and performance at national level. Identifying research trends and priorities at international level is therefore important. This paper offers a conceptual framework and defines the HPSR portfolio as a set of research projects under implementation. The research portfolio is influenced by factors external to the research system as well as internal to it. These last include the capacity of research institutions, the momentum of research programs, funding opportunities and the influence of stakeholder priorities and public opinion. These dimensions can vary in their degree of coordination, leading to a complementary or a fragmented research portfolio. Objective: The main objective is to identify the themes currently being pursued in the research portfolio and agendas within developing countries and to quantify their frequency in an effort to identify current research topics and their underlying influences. Methods: HPSR topics being pursued by developing country producer institutions and their perceived priorities were identified through a survey between 2000 and 2002. The response to a call for letters of intent issued by the Alliance in 2000 for a broad range of topics was also analyzed. The institutions that were the universe of this study consisted of the 176 institutional partners of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research producing research in low and middle income countries outside Europe. HPSR topics as well as the beneficiaries or issues and the health problems addressed were content analyzed. Topics were classified into 19 categories and their frequency analyzed across groups of countries with similar per capita income. Agendas were identified by analyzing the source of funding and of project initiation for projects under implementation. Results: The highest ranking topic at the aggregate level is "Sector analysis", followed by "Disease burden" and "Management and organization". Categories at the bottom of this ranking are "Equity", "Policy process", "Economic policy and health" and "Information systems". "Disease
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