{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.033202535466344704, 'fraction_numerical': 0.010866284334440085, 'mean_word_length': 5.72210953346856, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Public health research in Europe: SPHERE and the Nordic countries

SPHERE (Strengthening Public Health Research in Europe) is a collaboration funded over the period 2005–2007 by the Research Directorate of the European Commission [1]. The project included 19 partners in 12 countries, with five partners in European Union (EU) ‘‘accession’’ countries. A Nordic country partner was initially invited, but finally declined to participate. University-based partners were identified through the thematic ‘‘Sections’’ of the European Public Health Association (EUPHA), which has representative membership across European countries, organizes annual research-led conferences, and publishes the European Journal of Public Health. Partners from a broader range of organizations were also included to ensure that policy-related dimensions were taken into account. SPHERE arose from concerns that the European Union’s Sixth Framework Research Programme had prioritized genetic and clinical research as ‘‘medicine’’, to the detriment of public health research. In 2003, the Research Directorate called for proposals for a ‘‘support action’’ – that is, collaborative workshops and consultations rather than a primary hypothesis-driven research study – on priorities in public health research. SPHERE was proposed through the UK Faculty of Public Health, the national public health professional body, which provided management for the project. SPHERE developed two main lines of activity: describing public health research across different fields; and assessing international arrangements. A broad definition of public health research was used: research undertaken at population or health service levels, as compared with biomedical and clinical research at laboratory and patient levels [2]. Using PubMed, publications were identified in six fields of public health research [3]: health services research [4], environmental health [5], genetic epidemiology [6], health promotion [7], health management [8], and infectious disease control [9]. Using the Science Citation Index and the Social Science Citation Index, publications were identified in the public health literature broadly [10], and a closer review was made of seven journals publishing in French [11]. Publications over the preceding 10 years in each field were identified by country of author. There were striking differences by country per capita. Overall, in publications per capita, the Nordic countries were most prominent, while the lowest publication rates were from Portugal and some new Member States. Figure 1 shows this rate displayed also against per capita gross domestic product, along with other Anglophone countries for comparison. Nevertheless, the pattern differed by field: environmental health and infectious disease publications were more frequent in central and eastern European countries, while research using social science methods was most frequent in northern and western countries. How reliable are these results as representing true differences between countries? In their review of all public health publications for SPHERE, Clarke et al. found that about 20% of publications were in nonEnglish languages (predominantly French, Spanish and German), and the proportion was stable over the 10-year review period, even while the absolute