Development of the Rehabilitation Health Policy, Systems, and Services Research Field: Quantitative Analyses of Publications over Time (1990–2017) and across Country Type

Abstract

Background: Health policy, systems and services research (HPSSR) is increasingly needed to enable better access to, and value of, rehabilitation services worldwide. We aim to quantify the growth of Rehabilitation HPSSR publications since 1990, compared to that of overall rehabilitation research and overall HPSSR. Methods: Quantitative, comparative analysis of publication trends using the PubMed database and its indexation system. Comprehensive search filters, based on Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), were built and calibrated to locate research articles with content on HPSSR and rehabilitation of physical impairments. Additional filters were used for locating research publications declaring funding support, publications in rehabilitation journals, and finally publications focused on high-income (HICs) or low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The same approach was used for retrieving data on comparator fields—overall HPSSR and overall rehabilitation research. Linear regressions, with ANOVA, were used for analyzing yearly publication growths over the 28-year time frame. Results: Rehabilitation HPSSR publications in PubMed have grown significantly from 1990 to 2017 in the percentage of all rehabilitation research (from 11% to 18%) and all HPSSR (from 2.8% to 3.9%; both p < 0.001). The rate of Rehabilitation HPSSR published in rehabilitation journals did not change significantly over time (p = 0.47). The rates of publications with declared funding support increased significantly, but such growth did not differ significantly from that of the comparator fields. Finally, LMICs accounted for 9.3% of the country-focused rehabilitation HPSSR since 1990, but this percentage value increased significantly (p < 0.001) from 6% in 1990 to 13% in 2017. Conclusion: Rehabilitation HPSSR publications, i.e., those indexed in PubMed with related MeSH terms, have grown in both absolute and relative values. Rehabilitation HPSSR publications focused on LMICs also grew significantly since 1990, but still remained a tiny portion of the Rehabilitation HPSSR publications with country-specific MeSH terms.

Rehabilitation Service Assessment and Workforce Capacity Building in Albania—A Civil Society Approach

“…Therefore, our approach for Albania was to use the WHO’s tool and previous experiences [ 18 , 19 , 27 ]. This study also supports increasing the awareness of the needs and reports of research in the health system and policy research in specific countries [ 28 ]. Despite this project not officially being supported by the government, the commitment of people in this country has led to the high level of success of this project.…”

Global health workforce research: Comparative analyses of the scientific publication trends in PubMed

“…Also, PubMed addresses the whole health research spectrum, which enables comparative analyses across health research fields. Overall, due its coverage and search facilities, PubMed has been used to analyse publications trends for a variety of contexts and health research fields or topics, 23–37 including HPSSR topics 21,22 …”

“…[15][16][17][18][19][20] Furthermore, there is no information on whether the evolution of the yearly volume of HRH research publications has differed from those in the broader Health Policy, Systems, and Services Research (HPSSR), 5 for which analyses of publications trends have been recently developed. 19,21,22 Also, to our knowledge, there is no aggregative information about where workforce research has been developed, for example on whether the focus has been more in high-income countries (HICs) or low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). 15,21,22 Overall, we are unaware of a quantitative analysis of the global (i.e.…”

“…Overall, we are unaware of a quantitative analysis of the global (i.e. worldwide) HRH publications trends, even though these analyses have been proliferating in other research fields as a means to monitoring or informing health research and funding policies 19,21–38 …”

Mapping the occupational therapy workforce research worldwide: Study protocol for a scoping review

“…The strategy will be then translated to the search facilities of the other electronic databases. The process will be run by a researcher (TJ) with an extensive track record of conducting rehabilitation scoping reviews and designing search strategies for locating rehabilitation-related and/or health workforce content in scientific databases [26,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]. Snowballing search strategies (e.g., references lists search, citation tracking, author tracking) over included articles will also be conducted as a means to identify any additional references.…”