Abstract
BackgroundHigh quality primary care is fundamental to achieving health for all. Research priority setting is a key facilitator of improving how research activity responds to concrete needs. There has never before been an attempt to identify international primary care research priorities, in order to guide resource allocation and to enhance global primary care. This study aimed to identify a list of top 10 primary care research priorities, as identified by members of the public, health professionals working in primary care, researchers, and policymakers.MethodsWe adapted the James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership process, to conduct multiple rounds of stakeholder recruitment and prioritization. The study included an online survey conducted in three languages, followed by an in-person priority setting exercise involving primary care stakeholders from 13 countries.FindingsParticipants identified a list of top 10 international primary care research priorities. These were focused on diverse topics such as enhancing use of information and communication technology, and improving integration of indigenous communities’ knowledge in the design of primary care services. The main limitations of the study related to challenges in engaging an adequate diversity and number of appropriate stakeholders, particularly members of the public, in aggregating the diverse set of responses into coherent categories representative of the participants’ perspectives and in adequately representing the diversity of submitted responses while ensuring research priorities on the final list are sufficiently actionable to guide resource allocation.ConclusionsThe top 10 identified research priorities have the potential to guide research resource allocation, supporting funding agencies and initiatives to promote global primary care research and practice.
Highlights
Strong primary care is the cornerstone of high-functioning health systems [1,2]
This study aimed to identify a list of top 10 primary care research priorities, as identified by members of the public, health professionals working in primary care, researchers, and policymakers
Primary care is chronically underfunded throughout the world; efforts to advocate for increases in funding to 15% of total health system expenditures have been met with mixed success [5]
Summary
Like any other area of medicine, primary care requires high quality research for optimal performance [3,4]. The clinical research agenda and generation of research priorities has traditionally been driven by researchers and funding bodies, rather than patients, caregivers, and clinicians [6,7]. By gathering patient feedback about the research agenda and the research process, funding bodies and decision-makers could improve resource allocation and discovery in areas of patient need [6,10]. Given the value of primary care to health systems, and recent efforts towards primary care strengthening in low- and middle- income countries (LMIC) such as the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (PHPCI) [11], it is important to establish research priorities in order to guide investment and resource allocation. This study aimed to identify a list of top 10 primary care research priorities, as identified by members of the public, health professionals working in primary care, researchers, and policymakers
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