Every year about 24 million African women become pregnant in areas where the risk of malaria is high. They are more likely than other adults to become infected and this increases the risk of poor pregnancy outcome. Results of a study, funded by the UK Medical Research Council and conducted in The Gambia, emphasise the need for improved management of pregnancy and labour. Since the first study 20 years ago, several trials have produced recommendations on strategies to tackle maternal malaria. This serious public health problem may persist due to a lack of collaboration between scientists and policy-makers or because existing policy is not fully implemented. The researchers suggest that policy-makers should: Implement effective malaria control strategies for pregnant women, including the use of insecticide-treated bednets, and drugs to prevent and treat malaria; Ensure that control measures start as early as possible in pregnancy; Strengthen their working links with researchers and; Conduct community-level research to guide programmes, and monitor and evaluate success.
Monitoring equity and research policy
Of the US$73 billion spent globally every year on health research only about 10% is actually allocated for research into 90% of the world’s health problems. This is what is known as the 10/90 gap. This third landmark report of the Global Forum for Health Research underlines the crucial role that health and health research funding plays in breaking the cycle of poverty.The report covers progress towards narrowing this gap over the past two years and outlines plans for the coming years. The report stresses that prioritisation of health research spending at the global and national levels is a necessity if research funds are to have the greatest impact possible on the level of world health. However, it also notes that setting priorities in terms of individual diseases is not enough and that cross-cutting influences such as the capacity of a country to deliver health services, the necessity to look at gender differences, behaviour and lifestyles harmful to health, and environmental problems like indoor air pollution must also be considered.
The Directory of Training Programs in Health Services Research and Health Policy provides key information about U.S., Canadian, and European post-baccalaureate certificate, master's, doctoral, and postdoctoral programs in the fields of health services research and health policy. Each program profile lists: program objectives, program focus, degree(s) offered, program director(s), senior faculty and primary research interests, tuition, financial aid, average completion time, average number of students, start date, program structure, language of instruction, application requirements, and contact information. The training directory is an online resource that is updated continuously as we receive new and updated program information.
Neal Halfon and Miles Hochstein, The Milbank Quarterly, 2002
This article describes the Life Course Health Development (LCHD) framework, which was created to explain how health trajectories develop over an individual’s lifetime and how this knowledge can guide new approaches to policy and research. Based on the relationship between experience and the biology and psychology of development, the LCHD framework offers a conceptual model for health development and a more powerful approach to understanding diseases. The article illustrates how risk factors, protective factors, and early-life experiences affect people’s long-term health and disease outcomes. A better understanding of health development should enable us to manipulate early risk factors and protective factors and help shift our emphasis on treatment in the later stages of disease to the promotion of earlier, more effective preventive strategies and interventions focused on maximizing optimal health development.
This paper describes and analyses three major programmes that utilise the South African national mass media platform for HIV/AIDS prevention. These are the Beyond Awareness II campaign, the multimedia edutainment programme Soul City and the youth programme loveLife. Overall, the author finds that there are strengths and weaknesses in the application of theory and research in South African campaigns. A number of recommendations are made to help programmes: Improve the sharing of expertise across programmes; Develop best practice in new areas beyond prevention, namely human rights, stigma and care and support; Commission a review to establish what is happening in rural and very poor communities to ensure that they do not remain behind in prevention indices and to identify media gaps.
A series of recommendations focuses on improving ethics review of protocols, reforming the informed consent process, improving access to information by participants and those responsible for review and monitoring of protocols,enhancing safety monitoring, compensating those who are harmed as a result of their participation in research; and developing a standard of quality.
The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems research in Collaboration with the Council on health Research for Development, Global Forum for Health Research and INCLEN Trust have just published new training modules to support strategies aiming to increase the impact of health research on policy, programmes and practice. The modules focus on practical experience and best practices regarding:priority-setting in health research (6 training units); knowledge management (5 training units); advocacy and leadership (5 training units). Those interested in increasing the impact of health research will benefit from the modules. In particular, research managers, policy analysts within ministries of health and research and continuing education officers may find that training in these subject areas will be a valuable investment. To download the modules visit the Alliance Web site. In addition,
The Alliance in collaboration with regional HPSR networks is preparing a series of research to policy workshops with the aim of strengthening capacity to demand high quality, timely and relevant HPSR. This effort will be supported with the training materials just published. Indra Pathmanathan will be leading this effort and will rely on her vast experience with HPSR capacity strengthening and policy development. Workshops will be celebrated between November 2002 and March 2003. Grants will be available for selected participants.
Of the US$73 billion spent globally every year on health research only about 10% is actually allocated for research into 90% of the world’s health problems. This is what is known as the 10/90 gap. This third landmark report of the Global Forum for Health Research underlines the crucial role that health and health research funding plays in breaking the cycle of poverty.
Beyond health care, the economic evaluation of social welfare programmes is rare but the demand for such evaluation is rising. To encourage greater use of economic evaluation, undoubtedly social welfare researchers need to gain a better understanding of the philosophy behind such evaluation and the methodologies necessary to carry these out in practice.
Author(s): Winch, P.J.; Wagman, J.A; .Malouin, R.A.; Mehl, G.L.
This guide is designed for program managers, researchers, funders of health programs, and others who are considering using qualitative research methods to help them design more effective health programs and/or evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of existing programs. It is assumed that the reader already has some familiarity with the basic methods in the "qualitative research toolbox" such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. This guide describes some of the existing manuals for conducting qualitative research on health and provides information to help would-be users select the manuals that are most appropriate to their needs. This guide does not attempt to review the available qualitative research tools related to prevention and treatment of chronic and non-infectious diseases, including tobacco control, obesity prevention, or management of such diseases as diabetes or epilepsy.