[Public policies of research]

With its present configuration, the Spanish public device of research in health sciences has limited possibilities to achieve properly the aims of the Ley General de Sanidad, due to its reduced financial importance as well as its thematic and lack of mechanisms of interterritorial compensation. These limitations are effective according to its small capacity to provide information for the development of a health system, oriented to the overcoming of territorial and social imbalance as well as the promotion of health and prevention of diseases. The capacity of public policies of research in Spain to affect the work of researchers is very small due to the importance of the widespread practice of not using funds which are not specifically dedicated to research of the institutions employing the researchers, among other reasons. Most of the public resources of research are concentrated in Madrid and Barcelona. This situation can seriously jeopardize in a near future the development and quality of the attention given in Regional Health Services transferred to Autonomic Communities without big cities. The funds are mostly used to finance researches of basic sciences, medical specialties and clinic laboratories. Investigation in Public Health is only 0.8% of the research budgets, and the funds dedicated to research in Health Primary Care are also very small. The present predominant thematic and methodological orientation of health research in our country, with medicalized research aims, subindividual observation units, experimental designs, and analysis which are basically quantitative, can endanger the possibilities of Spain to achieve the health aims established by the OMS.