Resource allocation in research on health care: The Argentine case

In spite of the advances achieved in health research, great challenges remain, not only associated to prevention and treatment, but also to the enhancement of effective health programmes. In 1990, the Health Research Commission for Development, (World Health Organization), found that 10% of worldwide health research resources were devoted to study 90% of health issues in developing countries, known as the “10/90 gap”. Argentina is no exception of such unbalance that relies on the debate about priority setting and available resources. Nevertheless, the measuring of such unbalance is still a pending subject. The current work aims at following this direction looking for: i)quantifying those public funds flows provided by public organizations and destined to health research in Argentina, ii)detecting their destinations in terms of research topics in order to measure the magnitude of the gap, and iii)detecting whether there exist coordination patterns between financing agencies when it concerns research strategies and settlement of priorities. A panel data was generated with annual information (1997–2006) based on subsidies granted by the three national public agencies (CONICET, SeCyT y CONAPRIS), Descriptive statistic analyses and a logistic model estimations were performed on the probability that a project be funded, controlled by its own characteristics and those of the researchers involved. Main conclusions show a tendency towards greater founds allocation for health research by public organisms and provincial and regional concentration for allocated funds and receptors. Such bias, however, does not imply a regional specialization on issues associated to local needs. From the perspective of a model for national innovation, empirical evidence gathered in this study shows the need for improving efforts in this direction, although some tendencies towards focalization between institutions are identified. Finally, this document verifies the existence of a gap in the public research in health that approximates the world media.