Health Research Policy and Systems
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  EditorialWhy national health research systems matterStephen R Hanney1  and Miguel A González Block2  1
Health Economics Research Group, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK 2
Center for Health Systems Research, National Institute of Public Health, Cuernavaca, Mexico  author email corresponding author email
Health Research Policy and Systems 2008,
6:1doi:10.1186/1478-4505-6-1
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| Published: |
11 January 2008 |
First paragraph (this article has no abstract)
How to organise health research systems so as to maximise the benefits is increasingly debated at the national and international level, with some highly innovative developments resulting. We intend to publish a series of articles in Health Research Policy and Systems (HARPS) that describe and analyse these developments in various ways; both so that lessons might be passed on and to stimulate similar debates and commentaries in other countries. Adopting the perspective of a national system for health research immediately raises some perspectives with which a strand of traditional academic thinking is uncomfortable. And yet, for example, whilst the position of the National Institutes of Health in the USA is unrivalled in terms of the amount of high quality biomedical science it produces, questions are being asked as to why the health care system is ranked below that of many other developed countries in recent assessments [1]. Is there something lacking in the health research system in the USA at the overall level that contributes to this apparent paradox, or is it caused solely by factors within the American health care, political and socio-economic systems? | 
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