BackgroundDespite the conceptualization of health services research as an applied area of study, the challenge of making research relevant to the policy process continues to preoccupy the field and its funders 1,2 . It is the hypothesis of this paper that this may be, at least in part, a function of the research funding mechanism that is most often employed. Grants typically begin with a researcher-defined proposal, even when the general topic is predefined in a Request for Proposals, and they tend to end with the submission of a paper to a peer-reviewed journal. Most requests for proposals include no funding that would obligate, or even allow, researchers to interact with those whom they wish to influence with their findings.In this paper we analyze preliminary results of a new research program strategy developed by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) with the support of AcademyHealth that experiments with the structure and process of research. The initiative's goal is to spur innovation in the expansion of social protection in health in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its strategy was to require partnerships among researchers and decision-makers from the start of the research design. Five projects were funded from a pool of over sixty applicants. The assessments of these partnerships as they evolved dur-ARTIGO ARTICLE