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Strong national health research systems are needed to improve health systems and attain better health. For developing countries to indigenize health research systems, it is essential to build research capacity. We review the positive features and weaknesses of various approaches to capacity building, emphasizing that complementary approaches to human resource development work best in the context of a systems and long-term perspective. As a key element of capacity building, countries must also address issues related to the enabling environment, in particular: leadership, career structure, critical mass, infrastructure, information access and interfaces between research producers and users. The success of efforts to build capacity in developing countries will ultimately depend on political will and credibility, adequate financing, and a responsive capacity-building plan that is based on a thorough situational analysis of the resources needed for health research and the inequities and gaps in health care. Greater national and international investment in capacity building in developing countries has the greatest potential for securing dynamic and agile knowledge systems that can deliver better health and equity, now and in the future.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the leading killers among bacterial diseases worldwide. In the Philippines, the prevalence of culture-positive TB is estimated to be 5 per 1000 and that for sputum smear-positive pulmonary TB is 2 per 1000 based on the 2007 National Prevalence Survey. In addition, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome among Filipinos is 5 percent or approximately 5 million people have diabetes (DM) in the Philippines. With the Philippines being endemic for TB, compounded by an upward trend of DM, there is a need to jointly address this tandem disease interaction. This study aims to mount a coordinated response to TB/DM with the following expectations: 1) improve the case detection rate for TB, 2) facilitate early management among patients, and 3) prevent a significant number of severe disease and deaths.Mixed methods are used to achieve the objectives including a systematic review and gray literature to estimate the magnitude of co-morbidity with TB and DM, records review specifically medical records on clinical charts of patients, cross-sectional survey on knowledge, attitudes, and practices of health care providers on TB/DM screening and care, focus group discussions comprising of program managers and technical advisors of the National Tuberculosis Program, and costing exercise on bidirectional screening of TB in diabetic patients and vice versa. Given the government's commitment to the nationwide control of TB, the underexplored frontier of TB among diabetic patients can be among the stretch goals toward increased case detection, management and prevention efforts. Likewise, the increasing prevalence of diabetes in the country and the associated risk of TB transmission in a TB-endemic population suggest the need for raising awareness on the need for TB screening. However, there is a body of programmatic and operational research questions to answer before an integrated approach to bidirectional screening can actually be implemented.

This article reviews theoretical and practical approaches for setting priorities in global child health research investments. It also provides an overview of previous attempts to develop appropriate tools and methodologies to define priorities in health research investments. A brief review of the most important theoretical concepts that should govern priority setting processes is undertaken, showing how different perspectives, such as medical, economical, legal, ethical, social, political, rational, philosophical, stakeholder driven, and others will necessarily conflict each other in determining priorities. We specially address present research agenda in global child health today and how it relates to United Nation's (UN) Millennium Development Goal 4, which is to reduce child mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. The outcomes of these former approaches are evaluated and their benefits and shortcomings presented. The case for a new methodology for setting priorities in health research investments is presented, as proposed by Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative, and a need for its implementation in global child health is outlined. A transdisciplinary approach is needed to address all the perspectives from which investments into health research can be seen as priorities. This prioritization requires a process that is transparent, systematic, and that would take into account many perspectives and build on advantages of previous approaches.

This article provides detailed guidelines for the implementation of systematic method for setting priorities in health research investments that was recently developed by Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI). The target audience for the proposed method are international agencies, large research funding donors, and national governments and policy-makers. The process has the following steps: (i) selecting the managers of the process; (ii) specifying the context and risk management preferences; (iii) discussing criteria for setting health research priorities; (iv) choosing a limited set of the most useful and important criteria; (v) developing means to assess the likelihood that proposed health research options will satisfy the selected criteria; (vi) systematic listing of a large number of proposed health research options; (vii) pre-scoring check of all competing health research options; (viii) scoring of health research options using the chosen set of criteria; (ix) calculating intermediate scores for each health research option; (x) obtaining further input from the stakeholders; (xi) adjusting intermediate scores taking into account the values of stakeholders; (xii) calculating overall priority scores and assigning ranks; (xiii) performing an analysis of agreement between the scorers; (xiv) linking computed research priority scores with investment decisions; (xv) feedback and revision. The CHNRI method is a flexible process that enables prioritizing health research investments at any level: institutional, regional, national, international, or global.