Using a rapid environmental scan methodology to map country-level global health research expertise in Canada

Abstract

Background: Many countries are currently rethinking their global health research funding priorities. When resources are limited, it is important to understand and use information about existing research strengths to inform research strategies and investments and to drive impact. This study describes a method to rapidly assess a country's global health research expertise and applies this method in the Canadian context. Methods: We developed a three-pronged rapid environmental scan to evaluate Canadian global health research expertise that focused on research funding inputs, research activities and research outputs. We assessed research funding inputs from Canada's national health research funding agency and identified the 30 Canadian universities that received the most global health research funding. We systematically searched university websites and secondary databases to identify research activities, including research centres, research chairs and research training programmes. To evaluate research outputs, we searched PubMed to identify global health research publications by Canadian university-affiliated researchers. We used these three perspectives to develop a more nuanced understanding of Canadian strengths in global health research from different perspectives. Results: Canada's main global health research funder, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, invested a total of $314 M from 2000 to 2016 on global health research grants. This investment has contributed to Canada's wealth of global health research expertise, including 12 training programmes, 27 Canada Research Chairs, 6 research centres and 30 WHO Collaborating Centres across 27 universities. Research activities were concentrated in Canada's biggest cities and most commonly focused on health equity and globalisation issues. Canadian-affiliated researchers have contributed to a research output of 822 unique publications on PubMed. There is an opportunity to build global health expertise in regions not already concentrated with research activity, focusing on transnational risks and neglected conditions research.

Attempt to assess Canada’s expertise in global health research falls short

“…In summary, the Nagi et al [ 1 ] article considerably underestimates the size of the global health research community in Canada as well as its geographical distribution, its breadth and depth of experience and expertise, and its overall contribution to addressing the world’s greatest global health priorities. Global health researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, strategists and funders/donors would benefit from a more accurate in-depth and comprehensive analysis!…”

“…The article by Nagi et al [ 1 ] attempts to assess Canada’s expertise in global health research. Unfortunately, this attempt falls short because of important flaws in all three metrics of its ‘rapid environmental scan methodology’ (i.e.…”

“…from January 1, 2013, to March 1, 2018), Canadian global health researchers were authors in 1456 peer-reviewed publications on HIV/AIDS, 1251 publications on tuberculosis and 632 publications on malaria (PubMed accessed 10 April, 2020, using the search terms “Canada” and “HIV/AIDS”, “tuberculosis” and “malaria”, respectively), eclipsing the total of 882 publications for all of global health research reported in the Nagi et al [ 1 ] article. It should also be emphasised that the evidence base for key aspects of global health research, as defined by Nagi et al [ 1 ] themselves (e.g. including health systems and health policy, among others) would require a much broader bibliometric analysis than that presented.…”

Limitations in a rapid environmental scan of global health research expertise point to the need for more open data

“…We thank Gyorkos [ 1 ] for commenting on our rapid environmental scan of global health research expertise in Canada [ 2 ]. Gyorkos argues that our scan was not comprehensive because we used too few data sources to measure Canadian global health research inputs, activities and outputs.…”

“…Gyorkos argues that our scan was not comprehensive because we used too few data sources to measure Canadian global health research inputs, activities and outputs. Limitations in data, which were noted in our published study [ 2 ], highlight the current challenge of conducting rapid research within short policy windows using publicly available data sources in Canada and point towards opportunities for improving data infrastructure across countries.…”