Funding for health policy and systems research in the Eastern Mediterranean region: amount, source and key determinants

Maha El Rabbat; Fadi El-Jardali; Racha Fadlallah; Sameh Soror; Elham Ahmadnezhad; Elsheikh Badr; Jennifer Dabis

doi:10.1071/phrp3142119

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Funding for health policy and systems research in the Eastern Mediterranean region: amount, source and key determinants

Maha El Rabbat ^A , Fadi El-Jardali ^B ^C ^* , Racha Fadlallah ^B ^C , Sameh Soror ^D , Elham Ahmadnezhad ^E , Elsheikh Badr ^F and Jennifer Dabis ^G

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Public Health Department, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Egypt

^B Department of Health Management and Policy, Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

^C Knowledge to Policy (K2P) Center, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

^D Faculty of Pharmacy, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt

^E National Institute for Health Research, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran

^F Strategy Office, Arab Board of Health Specializations, Amman, Jordan

^G Juzoor for Health and Social Development, Ramallah, Palestine

^* Correspondence to: fe08@aub.edu.lb

Public Health Research and Practice 31, e3142119 https://doi.org/10.17061/phrp3142119

Published: 10 November 2021

2021 © El Rabbat et al. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence, which allows others to redistribute, adapt and share this work non-commercially provided they attribute the work and any adapted version of it is distributed under the same Creative Commons licence terms.

Abstract

Objectives:

To provide an overview of the current state of funding for health policy and systems research (HPSR) on a national level across the Eastern Mediterranean region (EMR), and to examine the key factors influencing funding for HPSR in the region.

Methods:

A multistep approach was employed, involving a documentation review, secondary data analysis and key informant interviews with 35 stakeholders from five countries in the EMR. Findings are presented narratively (and where applicable as percentages).

Results:

National funding for research and development (R&D) in general, and for health research in particular, has been low in comparative terms and lagging behind at the global scale, while funding for HPSR has been lacking on a national level. None of the 22 EMR countries studied had explicit national funding or a budget line for HPSR. Analysis of funding sources of 1821 published HPSR articles in the EMR (2010–2019) showed that the most notable source was external/international grants (45.6%), followed by university/academia (35.1%), and government (9.5%). Although HPSR publications have been increasing over time, this still falls short of the scale needed for strengthening health systems and informing current transformations in the region. Findings from the interviews identified several factors influencing investment in or funding for HPSR in the EMR.

Conclusions:

Many of the EMR’s policy priorities are related to health systems, however our research finds that overall investment in health research and HPSR is still low, with limited recognition of the importance of HPSR in the EMR.