Research into health delivery systems could cut global deaths in half – UN report

Research into health systems could prevent half of all global deaths with simple and cost-effective measures, producing dramatic improvements in health worldwide by translating scientific knowledge into action on the ground, according to a new United Nations report released today.

The World Health Organization (WHO) World Report on Knowledge for Better Health: Strengthening Health Systems argues that science must help to improve public health delivery systems and should not be confined to producing drugs, diagnostics, vaccines and medical devices.

In Africa, for example, it is estimated that only between 2 per cent and 15 per cent of children slept under bed-nets in 2001 – a simple, effective and proven method to prevent malaria.

Biomedical discoveries cannot improve people’s health without research to find out how to apply them within different health systems and diverse political and social contexts, thus ensuring that they reach those who need them the most by bridging the so-called “know-do” gap, it stresses. But at present the field attracts less than one tenth of 1 per cent of total health expenditure in low-income countries.

“There is a sense that science can do more, especially for public health,” WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook said. “There is a gap between today’s scientific advances and their application – between what we know and what is actually being done. Health systems are under severe pressure and there is an urgent need to generate knowledge for strengthening and improving them.”

Health systems research suffers from a poor image and has been under-funded compared to biomedical research despite widespread recognition of its importance. The lack of attention given to this field is also reflected in the fact that only 0.7 per cent of scientific articles published globally in 2000 were in the area of health systems research.

“We need to put a stronger emphasis on translating knowledge into actions – health systems research will help us to bridge this ‘know-do’ gap,” said Tikki Pang, WHO Director for Research Policy and Cooperation, who coordinated the team of 12 internationally prominent health researchers in both developed and developing countries who developed the 143-page study over 18 months.

“Also, that research is an investment, not a cost,” Dr. Pang added.

Ministers of Health from more than 30 nations as well as representatives of research institutions, academia, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), pharmaceutical companies and various key stakeholders in health/medical research will gather from 16 to 20 November in Mexico City in a Ministerial Summit on Health Research, hosted by WHO and the Mexican Government, to focus on the “know-do gap.”