Is there a fair allocation of healthcare research funds by the European Union?
Zoltán Kaló
Professor of Health Economics at Center for Health Technology Assessment, Semmelweis University
Our recent publication in PLOS One indicated that European healthcare research funds in 7th Framework Programme and the Horizon 2020 Programme were disproportionally allocated to EU-15 versus the EU-13, as only 3.1% of total grants were assigned to newer member states. Wealthier countries with strong research excellence had more EU funding for healthcare research. On the other hand, higher disease burden apparently was not associated with more EU research funding.
The current allocation practice increases the gap in healthcare research between higher and lower income member states. Due to the unequal access to international research funds, young healthcare scientists from lower income EU member states often decide to pursue career opportunities in wealthier countries with better research infrastructure and remuneration for researchers.
While our findings are in line with analyses on previous periods, they suggest that the EU did not implement any effective policy measures to improve the unfair allocation of healthcare research grants.
Further details: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207046
What do you mean by "Fair?"? The purpose of these funds is to use scarce funding in order to maximise welfare for the greatest number of citizens in the whole community, not to provide transfers to build capacity.? That could be a perfectly reasonable goal, but it is one that requires a degree of acceptance that (at least in the short-medium term) it may not be the optimum strategy to deliver the greatest results.?? The current system is far from perfect but it does actually aim to address these issues at least to some extent - the recent EJP-RD call for example provided incentives to involve the EU-13 in consortia by raising the maximum number of consortium members if EU-13 members were involved, precisely to facilitate that involvement.?? Personally, as a rare disease advocate I want the very best research delivered from wherever in the world it is best undertaken - a regional capacity building policy is a different thing altogether.? I am not at all against it, but it is different.? And, of course, many of the researchers working in the EU-15 actually originate from the EU-13 and will hopefully take that experience back with them.? It will even out, just not as fast as we all might like in a world of limited budgets.
EFN Secretary General - EU Nurses
5 年Nursing Research is key for H2020 and Horizon Europe to develop EU policies fit for purpose, in support of EU citizens.
Industry Director at EIU
5 年Interesting report, but it uses data from before the "Widening participation" programme was implemented under Horizon 2020. Do you think this will address some of your concerns, particularly in terms of building up research excellence in EU13? https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/news/widening-participation-horizon-2020-report-analysis-fp-participation-patterns-and-ri??
Strategist for Vision Zero Cancer- mission-driven innovation in cancer
5 年Really tricky one- Europe will surely not want to comprise the level of its research outputs, so any solution needs to maintain or improve over the existing standard. And in my mind, it depends on how you define the role of research funds and your time horizon: For best possible short-term outcomes, research allocation to those with the best track-record is probably justified. For a more long-term perspective, increasing broad capacity is surely a better strategy but that would have to be in the scope of these funds (instead of e.g. additional infrastructural and educational grants to build local capacity and prevent brain drain). And lower GDP, large disease burden and weaker research infrastructure aren't independent variables unfortunately....So what's the proposition??