Health services research in Europe: what about an open marriage?

Abstract

To start with the question in Diana Delnoij’s viewpoint title: we want to stay married, we do not file for divorce, but we go for an open marriage. Delnoij raises an important issue, and her views are very close to ours. It also gives us the opportunity to describe the context of her question, by providing the readership of the European Journal of Public Health with some of the main results of our project HSREPP (Health Services Research into European Policy and Practice), and to disclose our plans for the future. In contrast to public health and health protection, health systems and services are not directly part of the policy domain of the European Union (EU). They enter it as a result of policies in other areas, such as harmonization of education, mobility of labour and services, and competition, and as a result of rulings of European Court of Justice. The 7th Framework Programme of the EU for the first time defined health systems and services as a research area under its Pillar 3, ‘Optimising the delivery of health care to citizens’, aimed to provide the necessary evidence basis for informed policy decisions on health systems. In light of this increased attention, DG Research placed a call to organize a conference dedicated to health services research (HSR) and to receive inputs for priority setting of research in the area of health systems and services. A consortium consisting of main players in this field made a proposal for such a supportive action. The first aim of this project, HSREPP, was to elicit priorities for HSR in the following areas: health systems, health-care organizations and service delivery, HTA and benchmarking. …