Joy Lawn from Saving Newborn Lives/Save the Children, South Africa, and an international group of colleagues used a systematic process developed by the Child Health Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) to define and rank research options to reduce mortality from intrapartum-related neonatal deaths (birth asphyxia) by the year 2015. The top one-third of the ranked research investment options was dominated by delivery and implementation research, whilst discovery (basic science) questions were not ranked highly, especially for expected reduction of mortality and inequity in the short time to 2015.
Funding: JEL is funded by Saving Newborn Lives/Save the Children through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. IR received support as a consultant of the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative during the conduction of this study. There were no other sources of funding, and all coauthors (except IR) volunteered their time to conduct this study. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: Zulfiqar Bhutta and David Osrin are members of the Editorial Board of PLoS Medicine . None of the other authors declare any competing interests.
Citation: Lawn JE, Bahl R, Bergstrom S, Bhutta ZA, Darmstadt GL, et al. (2011) Setting Research Priorities to Reduce Almost One Million Deaths from Birth Asphyxia by 2015. PLoS Med 8(1): e1000389. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000389
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CONTACT:
Joy Lawn
Saving Newborn Lives/Save the Children
Director Evidence and Policy
South Africa
joylawn@yahoo.co.uk
PLOS Medicine