ABSTRACT
The specialty of family and community medicine was only established in Spain in 1979, and primary care research output has generally been very low, at only 0.6" of the total biomedical research production between 1985 and 2008. Currently, Spain ranks second, after the UK, in the absolute number and percentage of scientific publications on primary care among European countries and seventh in terms of the number of papers per million inhabitants. The increase in scientific production has been slow, but steady, from 170 in 2008 to 291 in 2012. However, primary care research has not yet reached the critical volume, quality, relevance or desirable impact, and key factors responsible for this include the absence of university departments of primary care and therefore engagement with primary care in the academic context. Funding from the National Research Agency has progressively declined, from 122 primary care projects in 2005 to only 20 in 2013, which represents just 3" of all projects funded.
