Developing a research agenda in headache service delivery: proceed with caution

With a recognition that the management of headache remains far from ideal, there may be more immediate potential to reduce the burden of illness from developments in the delivery of headache services. There is a paucity of evidence in this area and a danger that an expanding research agenda will be dominated by inappropriate methodological frameworks that have been so successful in developing medical treatments. The prevailing scientific methods are underpinned by statistical approaches that are aggregative in nature and assume independence of system elements, an approach that may have limited utility in the analysis of complex systems such as headache care delivery. This review calls for a shift in headache research resources to organizational development and briefly outlines alternative methodological considerations.