Health Services Research Spending and Healthcare System Impact; Comment on “Public Spending on Health Service and Policy Research in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States: A Modest Proposal”

The challenges associated with translating health services and policy research (HSPR) evidence into practice are many and long-standing. Indeed, those challenges have themselves spawned new areas of research, including knowledge translation and implementation science. These sub-disciplines have increased our understanding of the critical success factors associated with the uptake of research evidence into (system) practice. Engaging those for whom research evidence is likely to help solve implementation and/or policy problems, and ensuring that they are key partners throughout the research life-cycle, appear to us (based on current evidence) to be the most direct and effective paths to improved knowledge translation. In that regard, building on Canada’s recent Strategy for Patient Oriented Research (SPOR) would seem to offer considerable promise. The “modest” proposals offered by Thakkar and Sullivan seem less likely to bear fruit.