The goal of the Center is to nurture quality, scientific research in family and primary care medicine on the local, national and international levels. It aims to contribute to the improvement of the health in the community, by providing relevant, unavailable data on the health problems and needs of the population. Since its inception, the center has increased its activities, widened and developed the services it provides both to specialists and residents in Family Medicine and to other professionals relating to research in primary care and community health.
The center includes among its projects the evaluation of the national palliative care training program and on increasing the palliative mobile care unit operations. A major multidisciplinary study on safety and hygiene in industry as related to the Masters program at Ben-Gurion University was completed. In addition, Sial center has continued with its mission to encourage submission of proposals by family physicians and residents as well as encouraging multidisciplinary proposals with cooperation of physicians and nurses from the community and the hospital. The pain lab began its work with studies on diabetes and neuropathic pain, and pain thresholds of children born prematurely.
During the years 2000-2007, 195 proposals have been submitted for funding, 70 of them were accepted (36%), 99 papers have been accepted for publication in different medical peer-review journals. The ratio of publications in Israeli journals compared to foreign journals is approximately 1:1