Differing priorities for medical research funding
- Correspondence to:
Prof. M A Patton
Department of Medical Genetics, St George’s Hospital Medical School, Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 0RE, UK; mpattonsghms.ac.uk
Commentary on the paper by Hawkins and Law (see page 1107)
Advocacy can be a powerful force for change and those who work with children are the best advocates for the next generation. Drs Hawkins and Law have surveyed the pattern of research funding available for child and family health and have looked to see how this correlates with the government priorities for children set in the National Service Framework for Children and other government policy documents.1 Using a web based search of funding organisations they have found that the overall proportion of funding devoted to children is approximately 3%, and even lower proportions of funding are devoted to government priorities such as health inequality and adolescent services. By comparison the National Institutes for Health in the United States devotes about 11–12% of its budget to paediatrics.2
Children are not small adults. The research on adults will not necessarily be applicable to children. For example, they will have a different range of diseases and children have different responses …
