Contributed by Ron Gara| 21 September, 2005 17:24 GMT
'The widespread public support for research and researchers is now, as it has long been, entirely consistent with public aspirations for better health and well-being, and for longer and more productive lives.'
The majority of Americans strongly support greater public and private funding for medical research, according to an article in the latest issue of
JAMA. They are increasingly dissatisfied with the US healthcare system, recent opinion surveys indicate, and believe health research should be a higher national priority.
Mary Woolley, MA, and Stacie M. Propst, PhD, of
Research!America summarized data gathered from 70 state surveys and 18 national surveys on public attitudes and perceptions about healthcare and health-related research. The surveys were commissioned by Research!America from 1998 through 2005. Most had a sample size of 800 or 1,000 adults who were selected at random and surveyed by telephone interview.
In a poll conducted this year, participants ranked healthcare (28 percent), education (22 percent), and jobs (20 percent) as the top domestic issues. Seventy-eight percent of interviewees said it was very important that the US maintain global leadership in health-related research. Fifty-five percent said more money should be spent on research -- and, most importantly, that they were willing to pay for it.
Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said they were willing to pay $1 more per week in taxes for additional medical research -- a marked increase from 2004, when 46 percent said they were willing to pay more.
When asked what type of research was more valuable -- disease prevention or cure -- 48 percent chose prevention research.
US System Is Not the Best
Other survey results include the following:
Healthcare costs were a leading concern in terms of national priorities; accelerating medical and health research rated as very important to 66 percent and somewhat important to 28 percent of respondents.
58 percent of those surveyed indicated that as the US looks for ways to manage healthcare costs, the national commitment to health-related research should be higher.
60 percent said they do not believe the US has the best health care system in the world.
More than half of the American public are dissatisfied with the quality of healthcare in this country, the latest results indicate, compared with 44 percent who reported the same in 2000.
66 percent said the US is spending too little on public health research, and 64 percent said at least twice as much should be spent.
58 percent of survey participants said they favor embryonic stem cell research; 34 percent strongly favor it. Of the 29 percent of people opposed to stem cell research, 57 percent said their position was based on religious objections.
56 percent of respondents do not believe an abstinence-only approach to teen sex education will prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies, while 39 percent believe it will.
More Productive Lives
"The understanding, support and engagement of the public are essential if the research enterprise is to continue to succeed," say Woolley and Propst.
"To ensure that success, stakeholders in research must commit to listening to the public and being responsive to their concerns. The concerns expressed by the public are to be expected in the conduct of research that seeks to chart the unknown," the authors note.
"The research community should embrace every opportunity to engage the public in an effort to answer their questions and put a human face on research," they urge. "The widespread public support for research and researchers is now, as it has long been, entirely consistent with public aspirations for better health and well-being, and for longer and more productive lives."
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