National Health Research Policy
Health Systems Research India Initiative
National Health Research Policy finalised
Aarti Dhar
Move to address lacunae in publicly funded health structures restricting research in priority areas
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Policy aims at creation of system to maximise returns on investments in health research
Overarching National Health Research Management Forum to have representation from all stakeholders
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NEW DELHI: To overcome the weaknesses of the publicly funded health structures that restricted research in priority health areas, the Union Health and Family Planning Ministry has finalised the National Health Research Policy. It would maximise the returns on investments in health research through creation of a health research system to prioritise, coordinate and facilitate conduct of effective and ethical research and its translation into products, policies and programmes aimed at improving health especially of the vulnerable population. It proposes to ensure at least two per cent of the national health funding is utilised for research.
The Policy envisages creation of an overarching National Health Research Management Forum having representation from all stakeholders and will function from the Department of Health Research that has drafted the new proposed policy. The Forum will advise on and evolve national health research policies and priorities and evolve mechanism and action plans for their implementation. It will develop a five-year projection of the plans for health research and prepare an annual National Health Research Plan, do a mid-Plan appraisal for course correction, if needed.
In addition to suggesting mechanisms to nurture a scientific environment to attract talent and to develop human resource for biomedical and health research, the Forum will facilitate utilisation and dissemination of results of health research. To be chaired by the Minister of Health and Family Welfare, and co-chaired by the Minister of Science and Technology, the State Health Ministers would be its vice-chairpersons and the Secretary, Department of Health Research, its member-secretary. All Union Secretaries of various departments of Science and Technology will be the members as also the Directorate-General of Health Services and some health experts.
Inter-sectoral coordination
The policy, which was proposed in 2007 after the Ministry created a separate Department of Health Research, is aimed at ensuring that the results of health are translated into action. It will foster inter-sectoral coordination in health research including all departments within the government, private sector and the academia to promote innovation and ensure effective translation to encourage indigenous production of diagnostics, vaccine, therapeutics and medical devices.
Needed: clear policy
Accepting that there was also a “compelling need to build multidisciplinary research blending physical, medical and social sciences, the final draft says the increasing international collaborative research in priority areas of national health also necessitates a clearly spelt-out policy to ensure that the contributions of our international partners can enhance the ability of the partnership to improve national health. Some of the conflicts and failures of Indian health research can be attributed to the absence of such an overarching policy, it says.
Propelling development
The Policy will be implemented through a National Health Research System wherein all research agencies, cutting across Ministries and sectors, identify priority areas of research and coordinate with each other to avoid duplication, fragmentation, redundancy and gaps in knowledge, to enable the results of research to transform health as a major driving force for development.
Health research is a systematic generation of knowledge that can be used to promote, restore, maintain or protect health of individuals and populations. According to the draft policy, in 2007, 96 per cent of the research publications in India emanated from nine medical colleges out of a total of 300.
© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu
Health research in India poor: Lancet study
Aarti Dhar
Expressing concern over the scarcity of research on the routine health-information system in both reports and published papers, which is crucial to track the response of the health system to the health needs of the population, a paper on “Research to achieve health care for all in India” published in the latest edition of The Lancet medical journal has suggested that major national organisations of health research in India come together to provide effective stewardship.
Co-authored, among others, by Vishwa Mohan Katoch, Director-General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the paper suggests that these organisations collaboratively develop mechanisms that enable agreement on tangible mid-term and long-term targets for health research in the country, create a plan of action and methods to track the progress in research utilisation to achieve health care for all. Although solutions for India will have to be tailored to its circumstances, there are useful lessons to be learnt from the systematic efforts of other countries aimed at matching research with public health priorities to more effectively improve population health, says the paper written by Lalit Dandona and Rakhi Dandona along with Dr. Katoch.
Quoting PubMed — United States National Library of Medicine — the paper says that the proportion of published papers from India increased from 0•4 per cent of the global total in 1988 to 1•8 per cent in 2008, but the proportion of public health research continues to be small, at 5 per cent of the total health research published.
Additionally, many of the leading causes of disease burden across communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases, and injuries continue to be under-represented in this published research, indicating that even among the limited papers on public health research, public health priority conditions in India are not adequately addressed.
An analysis of public health research reports produced in India also showed that the leading chronic non-communicable diseases and injuries were under-represented between 2001 and 2008. Health system research was more evident in public health research reports than in published public health papers. Only one in four public health research reports were rated as being of adequate quality. The quality was higher for reports produced by collaborations between Indian and international organisations, indicating that there is merit in promoting such collaborations for more useful research output
The paper suggests that a national research-tracking mechanism be developed to guide funding and commissioning of high-quality research. It calls for creation of a systematic plan to integrate research initiatives with policies and implementation of health programmes, so that research is more relevant for the health system and policy, and the knowledge generated is used more often by policy makers. It also suggests that rigorous evaluation research be made an essential component of all major population health programmes and policies to understand how these could be refined to improve health outcomes and how the underserved segments of the Indian population could be better reached to improve health equity
The ICMR has been the nodal organisation for health research in India since 1949. To widen coordination between health research and various sectors, the Department of Health Research was established under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. This department aims to: encourage innovation related to diagnostics, treatment methods, and prevention; translate innovations into products or processes by facilitating their evaluation; and introduce innovation through health-systems research.
Although a full analysis of all present funding for health research in India and what it is spent on is not available, the funding from both domestic and international sources has increased substantially in India over the past decade.
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Team HSRII
“Engaging Public Health Professionals In the Process of Change”