Understanding the Situation

The Caribbean has a long-standing history of making research contributions to the global knowledge base on health. Health research can provide important information about disease trends and risk factors, outcomes of treatment or public health interventions, functional abilities, patterns of care, and health care costs and use. It can also assist in finding better ways to prevent and treat disease. In that regard, health research and the dissemination of its findings are important to healthcare development and the use in policy implementation.

As the principal Regional Public Health Agency for the Caribbean, one of CARPHA’s core functions is to conduct relevant research on public health priorities in the Caribbean. The Health Research Agenda for the region was developed in a consultative process to define areas for health research that should be given high priority in the Caribbean. It was also intended to Identify critical gaps and define health research priorities that can be adapted or adopted by Caribbean countries, researchers/research institutions and funding agencies. The final research agenda comprise of 553 topics: Communicable Diseases (48), Food and Nutrition (36), Noncommunicable Diseases (61), Strengthening Health Systems (94), Mental Health (66), Environmental Health (84), Human Resource Development (45) and Family and Community Health (119).

CARPHA also has a mandate to

• promote research for health;

• advise Governments and other stakeholders on research for health;

• Strengthen National and Regional Health Research Systems;

• Develop mechanisms to support priority research; and

• Promote the sharing of the Region’s Scientific outputs.