owards a broader mapping of health research

Important results from the project

This project aimed at finding the types of research conducted in various countries, organisations and funding agencies on two health topics: mental and cardiometabolic health (diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and obesity). The study has used publications to analyse the various forms of knowledge involved in the field ranging from biomedical to preventative and health promotive, among others. This information has been contrasted with perceptions of stakeholders on health needs with the goal of facilitating discussion on which research areas deserve more attention.

Expected long term effects

We have found that according to publications most research in mental and cardiometabolic research is related to clinical or biomedical approaches. According to interviews and focus groups, most stakeholders believe that more research is needed on the study of social determinants, public health and health systems. Nordic countries and funding agencies are among the ones that put more efforts in these areas, but stakeholders still believed that they should invest even more. Funders focused on ‘scientific excellence’ such as the ERC had a poor coverage of these research areas.

Approach and implementation

We have developed novel combinations of data sources to study research priorities: i) with focus groups and interviews, we explored the views of stakeholders and how and why should future investments depart from current activities. ii) with publication (bibliometric) analysis, we described current research efforts by countries, organisations and funding agencies. We have made the findings publicly available in websites that show interactive visualisations with information of the disciplinary and topical focus of countries, organizations and funding agencies.

External links

Report on Mental Health Research, including a Policy Brief in the Supplementary Materials Blogpost in LSE Impact of Social Science Blog Preprint: Priorities in research portfolios: more upstream research is needed in mental and cardiometabolic health Project website including links to outputs such as interactive visualisations, pubs, policy brief and blogs Report on Mental Cardiometabolic Health Research, including Supplementary Materials Presentation of preliminary analyses on research activities in companies in the domain of cardiometabolic diseases Presentation of the main findings for Mental Health. We will write another publication based on this presentation.