Altruism and participation in longitudinal health research? Insights from the Whitehall II Study

Research that follows people over a period of time (longitudinal or panel studies) is important in understanding the ageing process and changes over time in the lives of older people. Older people may choose to leave studies due to frailty, or illness and this may diminish the value of the study. However, people also drop out of studies for other reasons and understanding the motivation behind participation or drop out may prevent further loss of valuable longitudinal information and assist the continuation of longitudinal studies.     

Community participation in Quebec's health system: a strategy to curtail community empowerment?

Since the beginning of the 1970s, the province of Quebec has undergone a major reform of its health and social services system. Following this reform, the state has become a major protagonist, and the participation of the population is a built-in element in the system, guaranteed by law. Now, about 20 years later, there is a major effort to reorganize health services, in the wake of a "dewelfarization" mood that has reached Canada and Quebec. This article reviews the successes and pitfalls of public participation in Quebec's health system, presents the way in which participation is dealt with in current reform proposals, and draws lessons for people in many countries who have recently been encouraged to jump onto the bandwagon of participation as a strategy to promote the health of populations.     

Future of research in family medicine: where to from here?

Desired research outcomes in family medicine vary according to the developmental stage of the discipline and the context of practice. Several milestones in the evolution of family practice research worldwide have been achieved. Now family medicine researchers face the challenge of discovering how evidence-based primary health care can be delivered in a sustainable way to individuals within communities. To advance family medicine research, we must ensure that trainees have a positive research attitude, develop academic clinician-researchers, lobby for primary care research funding, support practitioners who wish to do research in their own practices, sustain practice-based research networks, and study important questions.     

Who transitions from private to public health insurance?: Lessons from expansions of the State Children's Health Insurance Program

This paper examines families of children who transition from private to public health insurance. These transitions include, but are not limited to, transitions that constitute crowd-out. We pool longitudinal panels from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) covering 1990 to 2005. The annual rate of children who transition from private to public coverage more than doubled over this period, although it remains small. Transitioning children in recent years are typically in working families with median incomes of around 200% of poverty. Children who transition from private to public coverage are more likely to belong to minority groups, to have lower incomes, and to be in poorer health than children remaining privately insured. Public coverage now provides important protections for low-income working families, especially those with children in poor health. These findings underscore the need to implement post-health-reform policies with an eye towards possible adverse selection into public programs.     

Consumer participation in health policy decisions: empowerment or puffery?

Many consumers in today's society have increased access to information about health and medical care through books, videotapes, audiotapes, the Internet, and television programming. However, consumers often are excluded from involvement in health policy decision making because it is believed that they do not have the necessary expertise. In this paper, the following will be discussed: (1) the historic role of consumer involvement in health policy decision making, (2) an overview of major barriers that consumers have encountered in health policy decision making, and (3) strategies for overcoming these barriers so that consumer empowerment can be enhanced when they serve on health policy panels.     

Does social participation accelerate psychological adaptation to health shocks? Evidence from a national longitudinal survey in Japan

Quality of Life Research - It is well-known that people psychologically adapt to health shocks over time and social participation (SP) has a favourable impact on health. Combining these two...     

Promoting research participation: Why not advertise altruism?

Participation rates have a major impact on the quality, cost and timeliness of health research. There is growing evidence that participation rates may be falling and that new research governance structures and procedures may be increasing the likelihood of recruitment bias. It may be possible to encourage public reflection about research participation and enhance recruitment by providing information about the potential benefits of research to others as well as to research participants and by stimulating debate and influencing social expectations about involvement. Publicly funded and charitable bodies use various forms of advertising to encourage altruistic behaviour and generate social expectations about donating money, blood and organs for the benefit of others. Consideration should be given to the use of similar persuasive communications to promote wider participation in health research generally.     

How can action research apply to health services?

The authors ask whether and how action research can apply to health services research, given action research's claim to be radically different from mainstream research. They analyze the key tenets of an idealized version of action research, comparing them with those of the approach characteristic of mainstream research. The authors conclude, firstly, that action research deserves all credit for pioneering flexible and imaginative ways of working. Yet, there is nothing in the fundamental logic of the mainstream approach to preclude it from adopting some of these. Action researchers therefore need to reconsider their critical stance toward mainstream research. Conversely, mainstream researchers need to reconsider their critical stance toward the ways of working pioneered by action research and to adopt them as appropriate.     

How can PhD research contribute to the global health research agenda?

We propose that PhD and post-doctoral researchers are a strong, untapped resource with the potential to make a real contribution to global health research (GHR). However, we raise some ethical, institutional and funding issues which either discourage new researchers from entering the field or diminish their capacity to contribute. We offer a number of recommendations to Canadian academic and non-academic institutions and funders, and aim to generate discussion among them about how to overcome these constraints. We need changes in the way graduate research is organized and funded, to create opportunities to work collaboratively within established low- and middle-income country (LMIC)/Canadian research partnerships. We urge changes in the way institutions fund, recognize, value and support GHR, so established researchers are encouraged to develop long-term LMIC relationships and mentor new Canadian/LMIC researchers. We ask funders to reconsider additional GHR activities for support, including strategic training initiatives and dissemination of research results. We also encourage the development of alternative institutions that can provide training and mentoring opportunities. GHR per se faces many challenges. If we address those that reduce our potential to contribute, we can become real partners in GHR, working towards equitable global health and solutions to priority health issues.     

Biomedical and health research: an analysis of country participation and research fields in the EU’s Horizon 2020

European Journal of Epidemiology - We analysed the Horizon 2020 project database, currently the European Union’s (EU) largest framework programme for research and innovation—nearly 80...     

Research ethics committees: agents of research policy?

   

The purpose of this commentary is to describe the unintended effects ethics committees may have on research and to analyse the regulatory and administrative problems of clinical trials.