A comparison of cancer burden and research spending reveals discrepancies in the distribution of research funding
A comparison of cancer burden and research spending reveals discrepancies in the distribution of research funding
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DOI：
10.1186/1471-2458-12-526
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发表时间：
2012-07-17
影响因子：
4.5
通讯作者：
Nguyen, Cecine N.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Carter, Ashley J. R.;Nguyen, Cecine N.
背景资料：理想的情况是，不同类型癌症的研究资金分配应该公平，考虑到每种癌症造成的社会负担。这些负担可以通过多种方式进行估算;“减寿年数”衡量死亡的严重程度与发生死亡的年龄之间的关系，“残疾调整寿命年数”估计疾病造成的非致命残疾的影响，经济指标侧重于税收、生产力或直接医疗费用的损失。我们比较了美国国家癌症研究所（NCI）的研究经费，以各种负担指标的最常见类型的癌症，以确定支出和社会负担之间的不匹配。LMethods：研究经费水平从NCI网站和信息收集的社会健康和经济负担从政府数据库和发表的报告。我们计算了各种不同的癌症和负担指标的每单位负担的资金水平，并将这些值进行比较，以确定差异。结果：我们的分析显示，资金水平和负担之间存在相当大的不匹配。一些癌症的资助水平远远高于他们的相对负担建议（乳腺癌，前列腺癌和白血病），而其他癌症出现资金不足（膀胱癌，食道癌，肝癌，口腔癌，胰腺癌，胃癌和子宫癌）。结论：这些差异表明，应调查一种改进的方法，医疗保健研究资金分配，以更好地匹配资金水平的社会负担。
Background: Ideally, the distribution of research funding for different types of cancer should be equitable with respect to the societal burden each type of cancer imposes. These burdens can be estimated in a variety of ways; "Years of Life Lost" (YLL) measures the severity of death in regard to the age it occurs, "Disability-Adjusted Life-Years" (DALY) estimates the effects of non-lethal disabilities incurred by disease and economic metrics focus on the losses to tax revenue, productivity or direct medical expenses. We compared research funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to a variety of burden metrics for the most common types of cancer to identify mismatches between spending and societal burden.LMethods: Research funding levels were obtained from the NCI website and information for societal health and economic burdens were collected from government databases and published reports. We calculated the funding levels per unit burden for a wide range of different cancers and burden metrics and compared these values to identify discrepancies.Results: Our analysis reveals a considerable mismatch between funding levels and burden. Some cancers are funded at levels far higher than their relative burden suggests (breast cancer, prostate cancer, and leukemia) while other cancers appear underfunded (bladder, esophageal, liver, oral, pancreatic, stomach, and uterine cancers).Conclusions: These discrepancies indicate that an improved method of health care research funding allocation should be investigated to better match funding levels to societal burden.