Do national funding organizations properly address the diseases with the highest burden?: Observations from China and the UK

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed an incipient shift in science policy from a focus mainly on academic excellence to a focus that also takes into account "societal impact". This shift raises the question as to whether medical research has given proper attention to the diseases imposing the greatest burden on society. Therefore, with the aim of identifying correlations between research funding priorities and public demand in health, we examine grants issued by the major medical research funding bodies of China and the UK during the decade 2006-2017 and compare the focus of their funded projects with the diseases that carry the highest burden of death, risk, or loss of health. The results indicate that the funding decisions of both nations do correspond to the illnesses with the highest health impact on their citizens. For both regions, the greatest health concerns surround non-communicable diseases, and neoplasms and cardiovascular disease in particular. In China, national health priorities have remained focused on these illnesses for the benefit of its own population, whereas the UK has funded a wider variety of research, extending to projects with impacts outside its borders to some developing countries. Additionally, despite an increased incidence of mental illness and HIV/AIDs in China, there is evidence that less priority has been given to these conditions. Both of these health areas seem to require more attention from China's national funding agencies and the society in general. Methodologically, this study can serve as an example of how to conduct analyses related to public health issues by combining informetric methods and data with data and tools from other fields, thereby inspiring other scientometrics studies.

The Prediction of Infectious Diseases: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…Actually, the scientific research of China has been growing rapidly in recent years and it has become the largest SCIE papers producer in most situation based on latest references because of the Double First Class Plan in China [38]. Although the document number of China is the top 2 in this study, the total link strength is not high and the impact of China's publications still lags behind, thus it should improve the quality of scientific research output and strengthen international cooperation in the future [39]. On the other hand, infectious diseases have a negative influence which causes potential risks worldwide to threaten public health and harm the global economy.…”

“…On the other hand, infectious diseases have a negative influence which causes potential risks worldwide to threaten public health and harm the global economy. Therefore, as one of the developed countries, the USA has a high level of scientific research, which promotes international cooperation with other countries [39]. In addition, the interesting finding in Table 2 is that the top 10 cooperative countries have a high-level education.…”

Global Research Trends, Top-100 Most Cited Studies, and Network Visualization of Eating and Feeding Disorders Research From 1900-2020: A Historical Bibliometric Analysis

“…These findings are in line with several other studies having diverse fields of research [47,48] suggesting that USA is playing a key role in delivering the latest trends in eating and feeding disorders. However, it cannot be neglected that due to high fundings in research as well as high economic scale and an advanced level of scientific research, USA has always been a global scientific leader in promoting international cooperation with other countries [49][50][51].…”

How does academia respond to the burden of infectious and parasitic disease?

“…The huge impetus and benefits to social development that science brings are being increasingly recognized. Accordingly, science policy is gradually bending towards finding answers for both pressing local issues and the world’s grand challenges [ 17 ]. Consequently, the relationship between science and society is changing [ 16 ] from one where “mad geniuses” are largely left to pursue their own interests, to another where “educated technicians” are increasingly being asked to make substantial and specific contributions to address society’s needs.…”

“…As metrics that reflect research effort, prior studies have considered academic research output [ 29 , 30 ], funding [ 17 , 21 , 31 ] and clinical trials [ 32 , 33 ]. The most common among these is research output, which is what we have used for this study.…”