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Table 1 Criteria for assessing equity in funding policies

From: Promoting equitable global health research: a policy analysis of the Canadian funding landscape

CCGHR Principles for Global Health Research

Description

Potential applications in funding policy

Authentic partnering

Building equity and reciprocity considerations into research partnerships, including the ways in which research partnerships enable fair distribution of resources, power and benefits

• Attention to research teams’ partnership structures, distribution of resources, degree of participation and/or collaboration (e.g. through team composition, budget) • Requiring transparency in intention to adopt equitable, ethical partnering strategies • Setting expectations for GHR to recognise and mitigate power imbalances (e.g. between Canadian researchers and their LMIC partners) • Requiring the use of partnership assessment tools or process evaluation, including research on the use of these tools

Inclusion

Intentionally providing people who have been historically marginalised opportunities to engage in research processes

• Promoting integrated knowledge translation or engaged study designs that include research users in identifying and defining research problems, setting priorities, articulating questions, conducting research and designing dissemination products • Setting budget guidelines for inclusion of trainees or mentees (e.g. emerging leaders), particularly from partner countries

Shared benefits

Being attentive to and mitigating the potential for research to benefit the principal investigator more than the communities or partners with whom they are working

• Setting expectations about research outputs that include benefits beyond traditional academic outputs (i.e. publications) • Requiring documentation of how research teams are attempting to achieve reciprocity • Encouraging budget allocation that prioritises equitable resourcing for LMIC partners to benefit as trainees and/or attend conferences • Encouraging budget allocation to post-product/post-trial benefits for communities involved in randomised controlled trials • Assessing for equity intentions in access to evidence, including open access policies for publications and in data repositories

Commitment to the future

Honouring global citizenship and humanity’s shared future in the world, including prioritising research that contributes to a better, more equitable world for future generations

• Examining how a particular project fits within a broader relationship or programme of research • Providing funding for multi-year projects • Inviting research specific to global sustainability and inherently global health issues such as climate change or globalisation • Assessing grants for alignment with human rights language and/or work • Encouraging budget allocated to trainees and mentorship • Funding multi-institution teams or networks • Investing in harmonisation efforts

Responsiveness to causes of inequities

Recognising, examining and interrupting root causes of health inequities through research

• Ensuring reviewers are familiar with the evidence about root causes of health inequities • Assessing grants for efforts to recognise, examine and interrupt root causes of health inequities • Encouraging applied and/or interventional research that aims to recognise, examine or interrupt root causes of health inequities • Encouraging research on research to illuminate and interrupt inequitable research practices or study designs

Humility

Positioning researchers in a position of learning, rather than knowing

• Encouraging adaptive, responsive or supportive steps for investing in research and/or knowledge translation (e.g. formative evaluations that open possibilities for adjusting plans) • Inviting integrated knowledge translation, action research, applied or engaged study designs