Setting priorities in global child health research investments: guidelines for implementation of CHNRI method

Abstract

This article provides detailed guidelines for the implementation of systematic method for setting priorities in health research investments that was recently developed by Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI). The target audience for the proposed method are international agencies, large research funding donors, and national governments and policy-makers. The process has the following steps: (i) selecting the managers of the process; (ii) specifying the context and risk management preferences; (iii) discussing criteria for setting health research priorities; (iv) choosing a limited set of the most useful and important criteria; (v) developing means to assess the likelihood that proposed health research options will satisfy the selected criteria; (vi) systematic listing of a large number of proposed health research options; (vii) pre-scoring check of all competing health research options; (viii) scoring of health research options using the chosen set of criteria; (ix) calculating intermediate scores for each health research option; (x) obtaining further input from the stakeholders; (xi) adjusting intermediate scores taking into account the values of stakeholders; (xii) calculating overall priority scores and assigning ranks; (xiii) performing an analysis of agreement between the scorers; (xiv) linking computed research priority scores with investment decisions; (xv) feedback and revision. The CHNRI method is a flexible process that enables prioritizing health research investments at any level: institutional, regional, national, international, or global.

Figure 1

A simple framework developed by Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative, which identifies some of the apparent criteria that can be used for setting priorities between the proposed health research options.

Figure 2

Calculation of overall research priority score (RPS) based on 5 hypothetically chosen priority setting criteria (C1-C5); values W1-W5 are factors by which each criterion is weighted (computed as average weights for each criterion obtained from the survey among stakeholders (in dark gray), achieved intermediate scores (IS1-IS5) for each research option (in light gray); the required thresholds for intermediate scores for each criterion (computed as average thresholds for each criterion obtained from the survey among stakeholders). The final research priority score for each proposed research option is defined as their weighted average: [W1 × IS1 + W2 × IS2 + … + Wn × ISn/(W1+W2+…+Wn). In the hypothetical case below, the overall RPS should equal (15 × 0.6 + 15 × 0.8 + 15 × 0.7 + 30 × 0.6 + 25 × 0.8)/100 = 69.5%.