Primary care research funding sources.

Area of Science:

• Medical Research
• Primary Care Medicine
• Academic Medicine

Background:

• Lack of funding is a significant barrier to physician recruitment in academic medicine.
• Primary care research development is often hindered by insufficient financial support.
• This study compares funding sources for published research across key primary care fields.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare funding sources for published research in family medicine, general internal medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology.
• To identify patterns and differences in research funding across primary care specialties.
• To investigate the prevalence of unfunded research in these disciplines.

Main Methods:

• A review of original research articles from representative journals in four primary care disciplines.
• Categorization of reported funding sources into federal, private foundation, local, discipline-specific, corporate, and none.
• Structured interviews with primary authors of articles with no reported funding to verify its absence.

Main Results:

• A total of 1,937 articles were analyzed across the four disciplines.
• Significant differences in funding sources were observed between disciplines (P < .0001).
• Family medicine relied on federal and discipline-specific funding; OB/GYN on federal, foundation, and corporate; internal medicine and pediatrics on federal and foundation.

Conclusions:

• Primary care disciplines exhibit diverse funding landscapes with notable similarities.
• A substantial proportion of published research in these primary care fields was conducted without reported funding.
• The prevalence of unfunded research highlights a critical issue in primary care research support.