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Priorities in Medical Research: elite dynamics in a pivotal episode for British health research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2021

Stephen M. Davies
Stephen M. Davies*
Affiliation:
The Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
*
*Corresponding author: Stephen M. Davies, Email: [email protected], [email protected]
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Abstract

Priorities in Medical Research (PMR) was published in 1988 by a select committee of the House of Lords. The report ushered in an era of NHS research and development (R & D) that lasted from 2001 to 2006. The inquiry's origins lay in concerns about academic medicine in the United Kingdom, yet PMR gave relatively little attention to this subject. Instead the report focused critically on the disconnect between the Department of Health and the NHS in R & D. This, the committee argued, had led to the neglect of research into health services and public health. To sidestep the report's unwelcome proposal for a National Health Research Agency, the department eventually grafted R & D management onto structures created as part of wider NHS reforms. The Medical Research Council successfully pursued a strategy of keeping the committee's attention away from sensitive aspects of its own programme. The final focus of PMR was shaped by an alignment between committee members with an industrial view of research and champions of health services research. The actions of the various actors involved are interpreted using elite models of the state, and the applicability of these models is critically examined.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 195 - 211
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of British Society for the History of Science

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