The Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region has been usually underrepresented in the discussion on health care systems and policies at international fora and peer review global publications, although it has constituted a laboratory of health reforms during the last twenty years. A common language to understand each other, the lack of resources to support international journals’ fees and eventual weak incentives offered by local institutions to enhance international publications may explain the gap between the dissemination of experiences and the actual generation of know-how.
Health Systems Global has identified these challenges and implemented during the last seven years a series of regional and national events within LAC with the aim of supporting the development of the field of health systems research, facilitating the exchange of experiences across countries, and identifying research priorities and vacant areas. HSG Bogota 2022 became a peak of such strategy where - for the first time - LAC hosted the Global Symposium. The event prioritized four key research themes, related to: primary health care developments, human resources, intersectoral collaboration, and the association between health policies and macro politics.
Health Systems’ Research Priorities in Latin America and The Caribbean summarizes these regional efforts. First, providing four LAC-specific literature reviews, reflecting the regional production on the trigger-themes of the Symposium. Second, a dataset of abstracts submitted by academics, policy makers and civil society representatives along the three cycles of regional pre-conferences was used to develop an article about regional research priorities and under-represented topics in the current agenda, suggesting future research lines.
The Collection is complemented with two additional pieces. One of them reflects the current discussion of health care challenges in the Latin American policymaking process on health, and the direction of future areas for institutional development. A second piece summarizes the Caribbean discussion about how to move from the current health systems organizations towards a more effective universal health coverage strategy. Overall, these articles propose an updated regional state-of-the-art in the field, opening a dialogue with the readers on how to design a research agenda for the future.
