Reimagining Innovation and Investment in Prevention and Care Research
What are the research questions, incentives, and overlooked opportunities for innovation that hold the greatest potential to prevent disease and improve outcomes of care in the United States?
The United States has the worst health outcomes of any affluent country in the world. Why? Part of the answer lies in the nation’s incomplete investments in research-based innovations to prevent disease and to effectively deliver safe and efficient care to all patients. Existing investments have resulted in breakthrough discoveries leading to lifesaving treatments, but we still have an urgent need to complement this support with investments in innovative research to keep people from getting sick, and to ensure that sick people have the best possible outcomes from the care they receive. To do this, we need strong pathways to fund, conduct, and apply research in prevention and care that mirrors the way we approach research for treatments. By strengthening support for research focused on the prevention and improvement of outcomes for medical encounters, we can maximize the societal benefits of health research.
Read more about the Doris Duke Foundation’s perspective.
Biomedical advances, like gene editing for sickle cell disease and immune therapies for cancers, have shown what modern medicine is capable of, yet many preventable diseases persist and clinical encounters can be improved to yield better outcomes. Research that could make a real difference doesn't always receive the necessary financial support or has the structures needed to translate breakthrough innovations into practice.
