Accounting for future populations in health research

The research we fund today will improve the health of people who will live tomorrow. But future people will not all benefit equally: decisions we make about what research to prioritize will predictably affect when and how much different people benefit from research. Organizations that fund health re...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pierson, Leah (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2024
In: Bioethics
Year: 2024, Volume: 38, Issue: 5, Pages: 401-409
IxTheo Classification:NBE Anthropology
NCH Medical ethics
TK Recent history
Further subjects:B longtermism
B health policy
B Resource Allocation
B disease burden
B priority setting
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Summary:The research we fund today will improve the health of people who will live tomorrow. But future people will not all benefit equally: decisions we make about what research to prioritize will predictably affect when and how much different people benefit from research. Organizations that fund health research should thus fairly account for the health needs of future populations when setting priorities. To this end, some research funders aim to allocate research resources in accordance with disease burden, prioritizing illnesses that cause more morbidity and mortality. In this article, I defend research funders' practice of aligning research funding with disease burden but argue that funders should aim to align research funding with future—rather than present—disease burden. I suggest that research funders should allocate research funding in proportion to aggregated estimates of disease burden over the period when research could plausibly start to yield benefits until indefinitely into the future.
ISSN:1467-8519
Contains:Enthalten in: Bioethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/bioe.13284