Rudan I, Yoshida S, Wazny K, Cousens S (Eds): Measuring ideas: The CHNRI method. A solution for setting research priorities. Edinburgh: JoGH, 2022; pp. 1–384. ISBN 978-1-9999564-7-9.
In an era defined by exponential growth in biomedical knowledge, and equally exponential expansion in unanswered questions, arrives as both diagnosis and prescription. Edited by an international consortium of co-editors Igor Rudan, Sachiyo Yoshida, Kerri Wazny, and Simon Cousens, this volume provides the most comprehensive exposition to date of the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) method: a systematic, transparent framework for setting priorities in global health research. More than a technical manual, the book represents an intellectual intervention in how science itself is organised, funded, and translated into population health gains.
The central problem the book confronts is deceptively simple: there are far more plausible research ideas than there are resources to pursue them. Yet historically, the allocation of research funding hasn’t always been guided by structured evidence. Strong motivators for investors were also disciplinary fashion, donor preference, or sometimes simply institutional inertia. The editors argue that without explicit prioritisation mechanisms, the global health research system risks inefficiency, duplication, and inequity. In this sense, the CHNRI method is presented partly as a tool, but also partly as an epistemic reform, i.e., an attempt to “measure ideas” with the same rigour applied to measuring disease burden.
The opening section situates this challenge within the evolving architecture of global health research. Igor Rudan and Devi Sridhar map the system as a complex ecosystem of donors, research teams, dissemination channels, and implementation pathways. Funding flows from public agencies, private industry, and philanthropic foundations into universities, institutes, and international consortia, where knowledge is generated and eventually translated into policy and practice. Crucially, however, this expansion has occurred in an uncoordinated fashion, with global research funding rising dramatically over recent decades without commensurate strategic alignment.
This structural analysis is among the book’s strongest contributions. By framing research as a system rather than a collection of projects, the authors illuminate bottlenecks that are rarely addressed: donor misalignment, publication bias, inequitable access to knowledge, and weak translation into practice. The “five basic needs” framework: motivated funding, prioritised research ideas, accurate recognition of scientific progress, open dissemination, and evaluation of returns on investment, offers a true conceptual scaffold for reform.
Against this backdrop, the CHNRI method emerges as a response to the second of these needs: prioritisation. Developed in 2006-2007, the method operationalises collective expert judgement through structured scoring of research options against predefined criteria. Rather than relying on closed committees or opaque deliberation, CHNRI crowdsources ideas from a broad pool of stakeholders. They include researchers, implementers, and policy actors. The CHNRI method subjects them to independent evaluation.
The methodological exposition is detailed, but still quite accessible to readers. Research ideas are generated either by participating experts or by synthesis of existing evidence. These ideas are then scored across criteria such as answerability, impact on disease burden, deliverability, equity, and effectiveness. Scoring is typically quantitative, it often uses scaled responses, and it allows aggregation into ranked priority lists.
This quantification of collective judgement is the method’s conceptual innovation. It transforms subjective opinion into quantitative data that can be easily analysed, while preserving transparency in how priorities are derived. Importantly, the scoring process is independent, mitigating the influence of dominant personalities that can distort consensus-based panels. The result is a replicable, systematic, and comparatively low-cost approach to research agenda setting.
A major strength of the book lies in its comparative perspective. Yoshida’s systematic review of priority-setting exercises demonstrates the heterogeneity of existing methods, from Delphi panels to the James Lind Alliance and Combined Approach Matrix. While each has merits, many lack replicability or transparent scoring structures. The analysis reveals the CHNRI method to be among the most frequently used structured approaches in recent years, reflecting growing demand for formalised prioritisation tools.
The review also highlights broader field dynamics. Priority-setting exercises have increased markedly since the early 2000s, spanning global, national, and institutional levels. Yet many remain one-off exercises, disconnected from implementation or funding decisions. This gap between prioritisation and execution recurs throughout the book as a systemic weakness requiring institutional integration.
Subsequent chapters explore conceptual refinements of the CHNRI approach. Notably, the method distinguishes between collective knowledge and collective opinion. This is an epistemological nuance that is often overlooked in consensus exercises. By quantifying both agreement and uncertainty among scorers, CHNRI can capture not only what experts prioritise, but how confident they are in those judgements. This dual quantification enriches the interpretability of the CHNRI method, and also its relevance for policy.
A lot of importance has also been placed on stakeholder weighting. Later methodological developments incorporate public and patient perspectives, assigning differential weights to criteria based on societal values. For example, equity or affordability may be weighted more heavily by community stakeholders than by laboratory scientists. Such adaptability allows CHNRI to reflect normative priorities alongside technical feasibility.
The empirical core of the book resides in its implementation case studies. These chapters transform abstract methodology into applied science. Exercises addressing preterm birth, integrated community case management, neonatal health, medication safety, and early childhood development demonstrate the method’s scalability across disease domains and geographic contexts.
The India national priority-setting exercise, which engaged experts from more than 250 institutions and generating thousands of research ideas, illustrates the method’s capacity for large-scale participatory engagement. Similarly, applications in humanitarian settings and conflict zones underscore its adaptability to fragile contexts where resource allocation is particularly consequential. Collectively, these case studies function as proof-of-concept. They show that structured prioritisation can yield actionable research agendas aligned with burden, feasibility, and equity considerations. They also reveal practical challenges, such as participant selection, idea consolidation, and maintaining stakeholder engagement over time.
The book does not shy away from critical reflection. Several chapters examine methodological limitations. They range from the potential bias in expert pools, influence of ongoing research trends on scoring, and the difficulty of predicting long-term impact. Transparency, while a strength, also exposes the subjectivity inherent in forecasting scientific value. Another unresolved tension concerns implementation. Prioritisation alone does not guarantee funding realignment. Donor agencies operate within political, institutional, and reputational constraints that may resist externally generated agendas. The authors acknowledge that embedding CHNRI outputs into financing mechanisms remains an unfinished project. From a science-policy perspective, this may be the book’s most important insight: that evidence-informed prioritisation must be coupled with governance reform. Without institutional uptake, even the most rigorous ranking exercises risk becoming academic artefacts rather than decision tools.
Stylistically, the volume reflects its edited nature. Chapters vary in tone, because they range from conceptual essays to methodological manuals to applied case reports. While this diversity enriches the intellectual landscape, it occasionally disrupts narrative continuity. Readers seeking a single linear argument may find the structure modular rather than cumulative. Nevertheless, the editorial curation maintains thematic coherence. Each section reinforces the central proposition that research value must be systematically assessed before resources are committed. The cumulative effect is less a textbook than a field-defining reference.
The book’s broader significance lies in its contribution to meta-research, which is the science of how research itself is conducted and prioritised. In recent years, concerns about research waste, duplication, and misaligned incentives have intensified. By offering a replicable prioritisation framework, CHNRI aligns with global movements to increase efficiency and accountability in science investment. Its relevance extends beyond global health. Any domain characterised by resource scarcity and idea abundance, from climate science to education research, could potentially adapt its principles. The method’s modularity, stakeholder inclusiveness, and scoring transparency lend themselves to cross-disciplinary translation.
For readers of the Journal of Global Health Economics and Policy, the book’s importance is both practical and philosophical. Practically, it provides a validated toolset for structuring research agendas. Philosophically, it challenges the assumption that scientific merit alone determines research trajectories. Instead, it foregrounds societal need, deliverability, and equity as co-equal determinants of priority. The implications of those messages for funding agencies are profound. If widely adopted, CHNRI-like approaches could recalibrate investment portfolios toward interventions with maximal population impact. Conversely, failure to adopt structured prioritisation risks perpetuating the so-called “10/90 gap”, where a minority of global disease burden receives the majority of research funding.
In evaluating the book’s place within global health literature, comparisons arise with landmark policy frameworks such as the “Global Burden of Disease” studies or the “Disease Control Priorities” series. Yet whereas those initiatives quantify problems and interventions, “Measuring Ideas” focuses upstream, on selecting which questions to ask in the first place. This upstream orientation is its defining intellectual contribution. By operationalising the valuation of research ideas, the CHNRI method inserts methodological discipline into what has historically been an informal process.
The book concludes with a forward-looking perspective. As research ecosystems become more complex, shaped by big data, artificial intelligence, and transnational consortia, the need for transparent prioritisation will only intensify. The editors envision iterative, continuously updated priority-setting exercises integrated with funding pipelines and implementation monitoring. Such a vision aligns with the broader movement toward evidence-informed governance in science. Whether this integration will materialise depends less on methodological robustness, and more on political will and institutional adaptation.
In sum, the book “Measuring Ideas: The CHNRI Method” is a landmark contribution to global health methodology. It succeeds simultaneously as conceptual treatise, technical manual, and applied case compendium. Its core message, which is that ideas themselves can and should be systematically evaluated, resonates far beyond its immediate field. For the scientific community, the book offers both mirror and map: a reflection on how research agendas have been shaped, and a structured pathway toward shaping them more rationally in the future.