Enabling greater private sector participation in health research in the Philippines

@#<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>OBJECTIVE:</strong> This study reviewed the current health research and development environment in the Philippines with respect to the engagement between the public and private sectors. The overall objective was to identify the role of the private sector in health research and identify barriers and opportunities for successful public-private health research partnerships.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>METHODS:</strong>  Key informant interviews were conducted using a semi-structured interview tool. Secondary data such as annual reports and project funding documents from the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development were also analyzed.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>RESULTS:</strong> The roles of the private sector when engaging with the public sector for research and development were identified as generators, funders, and adopters of research. Information gathered showed that there were several institutional and practice barriers to the successful collaboration of the public and private sectors, however there were also lessons learned from the successes of cases such as the Axis-Knee System, Sambong, and Lagundi technologies.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>CONCLUSION:</strong> The collaboration and partnership of the public and private sectors can be mutually beneficial. Government initiative to increase the ease of collaboration with the private sector in health research was found to be a necessary step to stimulate a productive health research environment.</p>

Operationalizing the development of the National Unified Health Research Agenda 2017-2022

INTRODUCTION: The National Unified Health Research Agenda is a major document whose creation by the Philippine National Health Research Systems is mandated by Philippine Law. Multiple frameworks, methods, and approaches for the development of a health research agenda exists. Available literature on research priority setting have mostly focused on its methods, results, or implementation. There are limited studies on the operations management of conducting a national health research priority-setting exercise.OBJECTIVES: This paper aims to describe the operational components utilized to develop the NUHRA 2017-2022 and provide lessons learned for future research priority setting endeavors.METHODS: This paper identified and categorized the operational components to develop the NUHRA 2017-2022 using the Enabler Criterion of the European Foundation for Quality Management's (EFQM) Excellence Model.RESULTS: Operationalizing the development of a national health research agenda requires the harmonization of multiple components. Having region-based staff involved in the production of a regional situational analysis improved its context and accuracy. The workload for each cluster team must be considered and anticipated by the management. Stakeholder engagement requires political, diplomatic, advocacy, marketing, management, and technical skills. The process requires building relationships with various institutions. In a largescale project, management processes must be in place to effectively track and monitor its progress.CONCLUSION: Operations and management are usually a neglected area in research and development projects. In a bottoms-up research priority-setting approach, iteration and flexibility is needed which requires a lot of management skills and insight. Duration of the project, planning, resources available, and quality of outputs have a strong interconnected relationship.

Mapping the influence of socioeconomic development plans on Philippine Health Research Agenda: A descriptive study

Background@#Understanding and addressing social determinants of health through evidence-based action is a strategy that has been advocated by the World Health Organization as part of its “Health for All” strategy in 1978 and “Health in All Policies“ framework in 2013. It has then been recommended that the research agenda-setting process should be informed by socio-economic development plans with the specific aim of gathering data on social, economic, and cultural conditions that affect health.@*Objective@#This paper reviewed the PDP 2011-2016, PDP 2017-2022, MDGs, and SDGs and identified common directions with the NUHRA 2011-2016 and 2017-2022.@*Methods@#A content analysis of the three identified priorities of the NUHRA vis-a-vis the PDP 2011-2016, the PDP 2017-2022, the MDGs, and the SDGs was done in order to identify harmonization of the priorities of the NUHRAs targets and indicators with those of the other plans and agendas. A gap analysis across all topics was done to identify links and gaps.@*Results@#The results established the common ground between health research priorities and international and national plans. Comparing the number of direct relationships between the NUHRAs, PDPs, MDGs, and SDGs, it was noted that there were more direct links between NUHRA 2017-2022, PDP 2017-2022, and the SDGs compared to NUHRA 2011-2016, PDP 2011-2016, and MDGs. The direct links were mostly found in 1) maternal, newborn and child health, 2) health systems, 3) communicable diseases, 4) water, sanitation, and hygiene, 5) environment, and 6) infrastructure development.@*Conclusion@#The NUHRAs may serve as pathways to achieve the goals stipulated in other socio-economic development plans. The relationships of these to health are complex, nonlinear and often the effects manifest after a long period of time, and as such require rigorous research.

Operationalizing the development of the National Unified Health Research Agenda 2017-2022

Introduction@#The National Unified Health Research Agenda is a major document whose creation by the Philippine National Health Research Systems is mandated by Philippine Law. Multiple frameworks, methods, and approaches for the development of a health research agenda exists. Available literature on research priority setting have mostly focused on its methods, results, or implementation. There are limited studies on the operations management of conducting a national health research priority-setting exercise.@*Objectives@#This paper aims to describe the operational components utilized to develop the NUHRA 2017-2022 and provide lessons learned for future research priority setting endeavors. @*Methods@#This paper identified and categorized the operational components to develop the NUHRA 2017-2022 using the Enabler Criterion of the European Foundation for Quality Management’s (EFQM) Excellence Model.@*Results@#Operationalizing the development of a national health research agenda requires the harmonization of multiple components. Having region-based staff involved in the production of a regional situational analysis improved its context and accuracy. The workload for each cluster team must be considered and anticipated by the management. Stakeholder engagement requires political, diplomatic, advocacy, marketing, management, and technical skills. The process requires building relationships with various institutions. In a largescale project, management processes must be in place to effectively track and monitor its progress.@*Conclusion@#Operations and management are usually a neglected area in research and development projects. In a bottoms-up research priority-setting approach, iteration and flexibility is needed which requires a lot of management skills and insight. Duration of the project, planning, resources available, and quality of outputs have a strong interconnected relationship.