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...
Main Author: | |
---|---|
Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
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 |
Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
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 |