Research groups of health evaluation in Brazil: an overview of collaborative networks

Abstract

The objective of the study is to characterize the research groups registered in the directory of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (NCSTD), in the thematic area Health Evaluation, according to their certification, year of begin, regions and states of the country, institutions and research lines. Through the collection of secondary data from all research groups in the NCSTD health evaluation area, from 1976 to 2017, 385 groups were identified, 30 groups were excluded because of the situation, which were excluded (6,7%), non-existent (0.8%) and doubled (0.3%). By means of descriptive statistics, of the 355 groups analyzed, it was observed that these are present in all regions of the country with a very unequal distribution, with a higher concentration in the Southeast region (42.8%) and at the São Paulo - Rio de Janeiro axis, being the main voids located in the states of Amapa, Roraima and Rondonia. The most frequent research line was the "evaluation and monitoring of health interventions". The panorama of the research groups confirms the well-known Brazilian inequality in the production of knowledge, the need to deepen research on collaborative research networks under evaluation and to promote research and training.