The Public Health Research Data Forum brought together more than 20 funders of global health research. Its aim was to support equitable, ethical and efficient ways of sharing health research data, that accelerate improvements in public health.
Our current activities to support data sharing in public health emergencies build on the forum’s work.
The commitment of forum partners to advance the sharing of research data to improve public health is set out in a joint statement published by The Lancet.
We funded a detailed case study of the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN), a pioneering data sharing initiative. The research, which was undertaken by Elizabeth Pisani and Stella Botchway, involved a detailed records review, in-depth interviews with stakeholders and a seminar.
Read the full report, or download the summary [PDF 29KB].
We funded a major study to gauge views on the ethics of data sharing among research stakeholders in India, Kenya, South Africa, Thailand and Vietnam.
A key outcome was an online resource for researchers and ethics committee members. It brings together guidance, policies and articles on data sharing.
Read a summary of the study: Ethical sharing of health research data in low- and middle-income countries [PDF 50KB]
See the Journal of Empirical Research on Health Research Ethics for a series of articles describing the study results.
Data linkage means bringing together two or more sources of information which relate to the same individual, event, institution or place. We commissioned research to explore the opportunities and challenges around data linkage in public health research.
The work was done by researchers at the:
The research looked at low-, middle- and high-income countries and used a mix of literature review, case studies and expert interviews.
Read the final report [PDF 1.74MB] and the summary [PDF 70KB].
We commissioned research to evaluate how forum partners could make research datasets easier for potiential users to discover and re-use.
The research team was led by Dr Tito Castillo at the University of Cambridge, with partners from the:
Read the:
Our seminar on 30 July 2014 explored how access to research data could be made easier and more efficient. Catch up with the presentations.
Conducting research in public health is time-consuming and expensive. Ensuring that research data, along with its published findings, is made widely available to the research community leads to more discoveries and greater efficiency.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation commissioned the Open Knowledge Foundation and Frost & Sullivan to:
We compare Public Health Research Data Forum funders’ policies and guidance to identify commonalities and differences and inform best practice.
Read the summary of funders' data sharing policies [PDF 288KB]
Systems that enable the citation of datasets can help researchers and funders to track the use and impact of re-usable research data.
We commissioned the Digital Curation Centre to examine:
Read the report: Enabling the citation of datasets generated through public health research [PDF 755KB].