Setting health research priorities using the CHNRI method: I. Involving funders

In 2007 and 2008, the World Health Organization's Department for Child and Adolescent Health and Development commissioned five large research priority setting exercises using the CHNRI (Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative) method. The aim was to define research priorities related to the five major causes of child deaths for the period up to the year 2015. The selected causes were childhood pneumonia, diarrhoea, birth asphyxia, neonatal infections and preterm birth/low birth weight. The criteria used for prioritization in all five exercises were the “standard” CHNRI criteria: answerability, effectiveness, deliverability, potential for mortality burden reduction and the effect on equity. Having completed the exercises, the WHO officers were left with another question: how “fundable” were the identified priorities, i.e. how attractive were they to research funders?