Public health research priorities in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries

Research evidence gaps place limitations on efforts to address health challenges in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

To identify public health research priorities in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

Based on the burden of disease data, the Gulf Centre for Disease Prevention and Control identified public health priorities in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries in 2023. We searched available literature on PubMed, Google Scholar and Google to identify research themes appropriate for addressing the identified health priorities. We then used the Delphi technique to prioritise the research topics.

The top priority research areas identified were: challenges in implementing antimicrobial stewardship programmes, economic impact of antimicrobial resistance interventions, effects of environmental change on the prevalence and movement of disease vectors, capacity and readiness of health systems to prevent noncommunicable diseases, factors influencing behaviour change for noncommunicable disease prevention, barriers to accessing noncommunicable disease prevention services, effectiveness of behavioural interventions in reducing tobacco use, gender-specific barriers to physical activity, seasonal patterns of physical activity, effectiveness of road safety interventions, and community safety culture regarding road traffic.

The research priorities provide a roadmap for closing the evidence gap and accelerating health policy‑relevant research in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.