Mapping health services and policy research settings in Canada: following the money, the publications and the interest.

While health services and policy research (HSPR) has an established footing in traditional research settings (e.g., universities, hospitals, research institutes) in Canada, its presence in other research settings (e.g., government agencies, regional health authorities, charitable organizations) is emergent and less well understood. Drawing on data from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, two Canadian HSPR-focused journals (Healthcare Policy and Healthcare Management Forum) and the Canadian Association of Health Services and Policy Research, we mapped HSPR settings based on three different measures: (1) HSPR-related funding, (2) authorship in Canadian HSPR-focused journals and (3) membership in a professional HSPR association. Our findings suggest that while a significant proportion of HSPR is directly linked to non-traditional research settings, the nature and extent of HSPR activity in those settings are unclear.