In their recent editorial, Baltussen and colleagues provide a concise summary of the prevailing discourse on priority-setting in health policy. Their perspective is entirely consistent with current practice, yet they unintentionally demonstrate the narrowness and moral precariousness of that discourse and practice. I respond with demonstrations of the importance of ‘interrogating scarcity’ in a...

The question of how public funds for research should be allocated has led to participatory priority-setting in prosperous democracies like Taiwan, Republic of China. Useful criteria for research priorities are scientific merit, social benefit and feasibility. Taking a health needs approach and using these criteria, nearly 200 nurses from service and education in a national forum participated in...

Priority setting research in health economics has traditionally employed quantitative methodologies and been informed by post-positivist philosophical assumptions about the world and the nature of knowledge. These approaches have been rewarded with well-developed and validated tools. However, it is now commonly noted that there has been limited uptake of economic analysis into actual priority s...

BACKGROUND Formal research priority setting is a recognized way of identifying important clinical research questions and promoting these as topics for commissioned research. This paper describes a research priority setting exercise conducted by the National Institute of Academic Anaesthesia (NIAA). METHODS Possible research questions were identified from a questionnaire sent to holders of the...

In public health systems, priority setting in health research determines resource allocation to produce evidence and proposals aimed at solving the population's health problems. In Cuba, the Science and Technical Division (S&T) of the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) leads this process, based on the country's health policy framework and consistent with optimal use of resources. To set health ...

BACKGROUND Scientific knowledge is a fundamental tool for making informed health policy decisions, but the link between health research and public policy decision-making is often missing. This study aims to identify and prioritize a national set of research gaps in mental health. METHODS A multi-approach method to identify gaps in knowledge was developed, including (1) document analysis and i...

Models for strategic priority setting in public health and health services research typically lack coherence or omit key considerations. We propose a new model, the Seven 'I's, with seven components: innovation, identification, inequalities, incorporation, importance, influences, and interventions. It tests the 'relevance' of research, while 'excellence' will be evaluated using existing criteri...