'All the stars were aligned'? The origins of England's National Institute for Health Research.

BACKGROUND: In 2006, the research and development (R&D) activity of England's national healthcare system, the National Health Service, was reformed. A National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) was established within the Department of Health, the first body to manage this activity as an integrated system, unlocking significant increases in government funding. This article investigates how the NIHR came to be set up, and why it took the form it did. Our goal was a better understanding of 'how we got here'. METHODS: We conducted oral history interviews with 38 key witnesses, held a witness seminar, and examined published and unpublished documents. RESULTS: We conclude that the most important forces shaping the origin of NIHR were the growing impact of evidence-based medicine on service policies, the growth of New Public Management ways of thinking, economic policies favouring investment in health R&D and buoyant public funding for healthcare. We note the strong two-way interaction between the health research system and the healthcare system - while beneficial for the use of research, challenges for healthcare (such as stop-go funding) could also produce challenges for health research. CONCLUSIONS: Understanding how and why England came to have a centralised health service research system alongside a long-established funder of biomedical research (the Medical Research Council) helps us interpret the significance of the English health research experience for other countries and helps English policy-makers better understand their present options. Learning lessons from the features of the English health research system calls for an understanding of the processes which shaped it. Firstly, the publicly funded, nationally organised character of healthcare promoted government interest in evidence-based medicine, made research prioritisation simpler and helped promote the implementation of findings. Secondly, the essential role of leadership by a group who valued research for its health impact ensured that new management methods (such as metrics and competitive tendering) were harnessed to patient benefit, rather than as an end in themselves. A policy window of government willingness to invest in R&D for wider economic goals and buoyant funding of the health system were also effectively exploited.

International Health Research and the Emergence of Global Health in the Late Twentieth Century.

An influential policy network emerged from two overlapping developments of the 1970s and 1980s: new research programs focusing on tropical diseases and debates about how to implement the concept of primary health care at the World Health Organization. Participating actors came together in an informal network that, by the late 1980s, expanded advocacy to include the promotion and reorganization of all forms of research that might improve health in the Global South. This goal became associated with a search for new research methods for determining priorities, a quest that reached a peak in the early 1990s when the World Bank entered the picture. The bank brought money, economic analyses, and neoliberal ideology to the research advocacy movement and helped stimulate an upsurge of cost-effective forms of economic thinking in global health (GH) circles. This expanded research network provided some of the conceptual foundations and leadership for several of the most emblematic institutions of the new GH. These included new organizations to bring together and coordinate public and private actors in pursuit of common aims and new forms of economic rationality. The network's advocacy work contributed as well to a massive expansion of GH research at the turn of the century.

[An approach to research in the political agendas of the health sector in Colombia between 1990 and 2010]. / Una aproximación a la investigación en las agendas políticas del sector salud en Colombia entre 1990 y 2010.

OBJECTIVE: To understand health research in Colombia in the context of governmental and legislative agendas related to the health sector between 1990 and 2010. METHODS: Official sources were used such as development plans, bills and institutional documents. RESULTS: The National Government, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection (MSPS by its acronym in Spanish) and the Colombian Congress have focused their attention on health research as a public concern at certain presidential periods due to their interest in reducing the gap between research and health needs. In the 1990s, government plans showed greater interest in formulating a Science and Technology (S&T) policy in health led by the Ministry, an entity that had directorates, commissions and committees responsible for promoting and planning health research. In Congress, some health system reform projects included initiatives to formulate a health research policy that were not approved. DISCUSSION: Health research is recognized as a fundamental tool to help solve health problems. However, said recognition by governmental and legislative actors has not been constant and the institutionality in the health sector has been precarious considering that there is no permanent interest in formulating an S&T policy in health.

OBJETIVO: Entender la investigación en salud en Colombia como parte de agendas gubernamentales y legislativas relacionadas con el sector salud entre 1990 y 2010. MÉTODOS: Se usaron fuentes documentales oficiales como planes de desarrollo, proyectos de ley y otras publicaciones institucionales. RESULTADOS: El Gobierno Nacional, el Ministerio de Salud y Protección Social (MSPS) y el Congreso colombiano han puesto la atención a la investigación en salud como un problema público en diferentes periodos presidenciales debido al interés de reducir la brecha entre la investigación y las necesidades en salud. En los planes gubernamentales durante los años noventa se presentó mayor interés en la formulación de una política de Ciencia y Tecnología (CyT) en salud liderado por el MSPS, entidad que contaba con direcciones, comisiones y comités encargados de promover y planear la investigación en salud. En el Congreso, algunos proyectos de reforma al sistema de salud incluyeron iniciativas para formular una política de investigación en salud que no fueron aprobadas. DISCUSIÓN: La investigación en salud es reconocida como fundamental para contribuir a solucionar los problemas de salud. Sin embargo, este reconocimiento no ha sido constante por parte de los actores gubernamentales y legislativos, la institucionalidad en el sector salud ha sido precaria y no hubo insistente interés por formular una política de CyT en salud.

A mixed methods contribution to the study of health public policies: complementarities and difficulties.

The use of mixed methods (combining quantitative and qualitative data) is developing in a variety of forms, especially in the health field. Our own research has adopted this perspective from the outset. We have sought all along to innovate in various ways and especially to develop an equal partnership, in the sense of not allowing any single approach to dominate. After briefly describing mixed methods, in this article we explain and illustrate how we have exploited both qualitative and quantitative methods to answer our research questions, ending with a reflective analysis of our experiment.

A "Child's Rights Perspective": The "Right" of Children and Young People to Participate in Health Care Research.

As all human beings are consumers of health care provision across the life span and in receipt of care delivered by accountable health care professionals, all should have the right to be involved in shaping the future of their own health care. Rights-based participation, when applied successfully, has the potential to inform and influence the delivery of child health care, the child's experience of health care, plus children's nursing education (Coyne & Gallagher, 2011). The "right" of every child and young person to participate in research that relates to their own health care is also sustained by the author's lead position as a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education for pre-registration children's nursing in Northern Ireland and the appreciation of their voice when practicing as a registered children's nurse and ward sister. The report provides an insight into seminal work on human and child rights; the historical context of children in Western society, and the evolution of children's nursing amid the child's right to participate in shaping their own health care.

Cultural safety, diversity and the servicer user and carer movement in mental health research.

This study will be of interest to anyone concerned with a critical appraisal of mental health service users' and carers' participation in research collaboration and with the potential of the postcolonial paradigm of cultural safety to contribute to the service user research (SUR) movement. The history and nature of the mental health field and its relationship to colonial processes provokes a consideration of whether cultural safety could focus attention on diversity, power imbalance, cultural dominance and structural inequality, identified as barriers and tensions in SUR. We consider these issues in the context of state-driven approaches towards SUR in planning and evaluation and the concurrent rise of the SUR movement in the UK and Australia, societies with an intimate involvement in processes of colonisation. We consider the principles and motivations underlying cultural safety and SUR in the context of the policy agenda informing SUR. We conclude that while both cultural safety and SUR are underpinned by social constructionism constituting similarities in principles and intent, cultural safety has additional dimensions. Hence, we call on researchers to use the explicitly political and self-reflective process of cultural safety to think about and address issues of diversity, power and social justice in research collaboration.

Where theory and practice of global health intersect: the developmental history of a Canadian global health initiative.

OBJECTIVE: This paper examines the scope of practice of global health, drawing on the practical experience of a global health initiative of the Government of Canada--the Teasdale-Corti Global Health Research Partnership Program. A number of challenges in the practical application of theoretical definitions and understandings of global health are addressed. These challenges are grouped under five areas that form essential characteristics of global health: equity and egalitarian North-South partnerships, interdisciplinary scope, focus on upstream determinants of health, global conceptualization, and global health as an area of both research and practice. DESIGN: Information in this paper is based on the results of an external evaluation of the program, which involved analysis of project proposals and technical reports, surveys with grantees and interviews with grantees and program designers, as well as case studies of three projects and a review of relevant literature. RESULTS: The philosophy and recent definitions of global health represent a significant and important departure from the international health paradigm. However, the practical applicability of this maturing area of research and practice still faces significant systemic and structural impediments that, if not acknowledged and addressed, will continue to undermine the development of global health as an effective means to addressing health inequities globally and to better understanding, and acting upon, upstream determinants of health toward health for all. CONCLUSIONS: While it strives to redress global inequities, global health continues to be a construct that is promoted, studied, and dictated mostly by Northern institutions and scholars. Until practical mechanisms are put in place for truly egalitarian partnerships between North and South for both the study and practice of global health, the emerging philosophy of global health cannot be effectively put into practice.

"It doesn't have to be this way".

Clyde Hertzman's sudden and untimely death was a terrible blow to those who knew him. It was also a major loss to health research and policy in canada and well beyond. He was an outstanding public academic, at the top of his intellectual game. here i attempt a highly selective and personal account of how he developed the conceptual framework that he called "the whole enchilada," of the social context influencing both biological and behavioural development from earliest infancy. From these roots spring our life trajectories, evolving social gradients of more--or less--successful experience at each life stage. the international performance of a society reflects the sum of these trajectories. Canada could do much better, but not in Harperland.

A percepção dos usuários sobre a oferta de programas de promoção da saúde e prevenção de doenças: o caso de uma operadora de autogestão / The users' perception of a health promotion and prevention program offer: a self-management operator case

A coexistência do setor público e privado de saúde no Brasil é antiga e os arranjos percorridos têm contribuído para a construção de um sistema fragmentado e complexo. Na busca por estabelecer políticas setoriais em harmonia com o Sistema Único de Saúde, a Agência Nacional de Saúde Suplementar tem estimulado o desenvolvimento de programas de promoção da saúde e prevenção de doenças no setor. Essas ações são consideradas como um conjunto heterogêneo de estratégias na consolidação de políticas que visem à saúde da população. Este é um estudo de caráter qualitativo que objetiva analisar esses programas em uma operadora de autogestão, com o intuito de compreender se eles produzem dispositivos biopolíticos. Foram coletados os discursos dos usuários dos programas por meio de um roteiro semiestruturado e utilizou-se a técnica de análise de conteúdo. Os resultados mostram que se encontram em curso alguns processos de reestruturação da produção do cuidado, e os aspectos relacionais têm sido priorizados nesses programas. Essas ações configuram-se em dispositivos biopolíticos conduzindo formas de viver. É importante a existência de equilíbrio entre as práticas desses poderes e a produção de liberdade, atentando para que não haja intervenções biopolíticas arbitrárias e autoritárias na produção das ações de saúde.

The coexistence of public and private health care systems in Brazil is old and their arrangements have contributed to the construction of a fragmented system. In seeking to establish policies in agreement with the Brazilian Unifed Health System, the National Agency of Supplemental Health insurance has encouraged the development of programs for health promotion and disease prevention on the private sector. These actions are a heterogeneous set of strategies to consolidate policies aiming at the population's health. This is a qualitative study that analyzes these preventive programs in a private health insurance agency, to understand whether they produce bio-political devices. Speeches were collected from users of the programs through a semi-structured script using the technique of content analysis. The results show that some restructuring processes of care production are ongoing, and relational aspects have been targeted in these programs. These actions are configured in devices leading biopolitical forms of life. It is important to have balance between these powers and the production practices of freedom, noting that there is no arbitrary and authoritarian biopolitical interventions in the production of health actions.

Expenditures for public health: assessing historical and prospective trends.

We integrated publicly available fiscal and budgetary data to assess historical and prospective trends in public health system funding at the federal, state, and local levels in relation to the recommended objectives outlined in the Institute of Medicine's definitive 2002 report. Although historical growth rates for public health expenditures at all levels were competitive with other major funding objects (requested or funded budget items), outlays for health care services and medical research dwarfed public health spending in absolute amounts. Competition for scarce discretionary resources, competing policy priorities, and protracted fiscal pressures will make it difficult for public health systems to achieve the recommended objectives.

Public health and nutrition after the Spanish Civil War. An intervention by the Rockefeller Foundation.

We describe a nutritional intervention by the Rockefeller Foundation's International Health Division in Spain after the Spanish Civil War, delineating the relationships between the technicians sent by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Spanish health authorities. We analyze reports of the nutritional situation in Spain in the early 1940s and the design and outcomes of a nutrition survey conducted in a district of Madrid by American and Spanish nutritionists. This nutritional survey, which was based on food intake interviews and was complemented with anthropometric measurements, clinical examinations, and blood tests, found several symptoms and signs of malnutrition. The Rockefeller Foundation's nutritional research was an important historical precedent for later studies made in emergency situations or armed conflicts. Similar surveys have been carried out in the last several decades by distinguished academic departments of public health and epidemiology and by humanitarian aid agencies.

Frederick L. Hoffman, LLD (Hon), 1865-1946.

This biographical sketch on Frederick L. Hoffman corresponds to the historic text, The Classic: A Plan for a More Effective Federal and State Health Administration, available at DOI 10.1007/s11999-009-1000-x. The article can also be accessed on the American Journal of Public Health web site at (http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/9/3/161-a).

A plan for a more effective federal and state health administration. 1919.

This Classic article is a reprint of the original work by Frederick L. Hoffman, LLD, A Plan for a More Effective Federal and State Health Administration. An accompanying biographical sketch on Frederick L. Hoffman, LLD, is available at DOI 10.1007/s11999-009-1001-9. The Classic Article is (c)1919 by the American Public Health Association and is reprinted with permission from Hoffman FL. A plan for a more effective federal and state health administration. Am J Public Health. 1919;9:161-169. The article can also be accessed on the American Journal of Public Health web site at (http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/9/3/161-a).