research
An assessment of health research impact in
Iran
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Abstract
Background: In recent years, Iran has made significant developments in the field of health sciences. However, the
question is whether this considerable increase has affected public health. The research budget has always been
negligible and unsustainable in developing countries. Hence, using the Payback Framework, we conducted this
study to evaluate the impact of health research in Iran.
Methods: By using a cross-sectional method and two-stage stratified cluster sampling, the projects were randomly
selected from six medical universities. A questionnaire was designed according to the Payback Framework and
completed by the principle investigators of the randomly selected projects.
Results: The response rate was 70.4%. Ten point twenty-four percent (10.24%) of the studies had been ordered by
a knowledge user organization. The average number of articles published in journals per project was 0.96, and half
of the studies had no articles published in Scopus. The results of 12% of the studies had been used in systematic
review articles and the same proportion had been utilized in clinical or public health guidelines. The results of 5.3%
of the studies had been implemented in the Health Ministry’s policymaking. 62% of the studies were expected to
affect health directly, 38% of them had been implemented, and among the latter 60% had achieved the expected
results. Concerning the economic impacts, the most common expected impact was the reduction of ‘days of work
missed because of illness or disability’ and impact on personal and health system costs. About 36% of these studies
had been implemented, and 61% had achieved the expected impact.
Conclusion: In most aspects, the status of research impact needs improvement. A comparison of Iran’s ranking of
knowledge creation and knowledge impact in the Global Innovation Index confirms these findings. The most
important problems identified were, not conducting research based on national needs, and the lack of
implementation of research results.
Keywords: Research impact assessment, Payback, Health research syste