Cultivating Value Co-Creation in Health System Research Comment on "Experience of Health Leadership in Partnering with University-Based Researchers in Canada – A Call to Re-imagine Research"

Partnerships have various purposes and exist in many configurations. Although there has been a refocusing in health system research on forming strategic partnerships between researchers and knowledge users (KUs) to maximise the relevance and uptake of research in practice; research knowledge frequently fails to reach KUs nor impact the community served. Whilst there have been many attempts to engage KUs, researchers and decisionmakers often promote a top down approach that has lacked insight into KUs’ specific needs and values. Bowen and colleagues uncovered a plethora of negative experiences from a group of Canadian health leaders involved in researcher partnerships. Their comments reflect their experiences seemingly at an earlier stage of a partnership so we were not surprised by their pessimism. However, our experience reflects an established research-health service partnership network where we collaborate and co-create for mutual benefit and with a shared purpose. The reason for its sustained success over several decades is the focus on co-creation of value between stakeholders. Reimagining must prioritise a paradigm shift towards value co-creation if partnerships are to create opportunities for innovation, productivity and impact.

Health System Research: Development, Designs and Methods

Health system research concerns with health system and its results provide the bases to managers, policy makers as well as community people to make evidence based decision. There are different interpretations of what a health system is. In narrow meaning, health system is considered the different levels of the health care services such as central level health care, state/ provincial level health care, regional/zonal/district level health care and local level health care. In broad aspect, health system covers different aspects of society such as socio-economic status, culture, religion, education, politics, public sector, private sectors which are the major determinants of social epidemiology. It is also a knowledge generation to improve how societies organise to achieve health goals and contributes to sound, socially relevant and ethically acceptable guidelines for more effective, efficient and sustainable health policies and systems. Key words: Health system research, development, designs, methods, healthcare research