Professor Andrew Ustianowski, Joint National Specialty Lead for Infection, and Tracy Harman, Head of Medical Directorate, reflect on how COVID-19 impacted the research delivery landscape and how the research community can learn from this legacy.
Following Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid releasing England's first Rare Diseases Action Plan, Hannah Stark, Operations Lead at the NIHR BioResource, explains the importance of a national concerted effort to tackle rare diseases and the role of volunteer participant cohorts.
Research has uncovered how historical and contemporary injustice and institutional mistrust influenced how public health information was received by ethnic minority communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Professor Tushna Vandrevala describes how important it is to get government messaging right and the advice from her research on creating inclusive and effective health behaviour communications.
Adam Harangozó, NIHR’s first Wikipedian in residence explains how the NIHR has joined forces with Wikimedia UK to disseminate health and care research using Wikipedia. Simply put, Wikipedia is where people look for information.
Richard Francis, Head of Research at the Stroke Association, writes about the charity’s new funding partnership with NIHR’s Programme Grants for Applied Research (PGfAR). He explains how together, we’re opening a funding competition for research that can improve rehabilitation and long-term care for stroke survivors.
Professor Lucy Chappell, Chief Executive Officer of the NIHR, writes about her experience of gender bias in the workplace and as a female consultant and calls for everyone in the research community to promote a gender equal world.
For International Women’s Day, Mirae Harford, a specialist registrar in intensive care medicine and former NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow, writes about the challenges of female early career researchers and how funders can break the bias against women in research.
Professor Mike Lewis, Director of NIHR's Invention for Innovation (i4i) Programme highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a shakeup of some research funding models and explains how the NIHR's new, pilot FAST funding scheme, will provide accelerated, simple funding to allow innovations to be further explored for follow-on investment.
Emma Palmer Foster, Chair of the NIHR Invention for Innovation Product Development Awards Selection Committee A, writes about what excites her about science and argues that we must make science a natural career choice for women and girls. Her blog marks International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
Professor John O’Brien, NIHR Clinical Research Network National Speciality Lead for Dementias explains that despite different global decisions on whether to approve the drug aducanumab, the fact that this is the first drug to target one of the contributors of the disease is a significant stride forward in dementia research.
Professor Danny McAuley, Director of the Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Programme, writes about how the role of translational research in the journey from scientific discovery through to directly benefiting patients is more visible than ever following the COVID-19 pandemic and how EME is playing a crucial role.
The Kigali Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases, launched on 27 January with CMO Sir Chris Whitty and several heads of state, is a major milestone in global health. Professor Gail Davey, Director of the NIHR’s Global Health Research Unit on Neglected Tropical Diseases, and a leading authority on stigmatising skin diseases, argues that the Declaration both embodies the principles of partnership and ownership by low and middle income countries (LMICs), and provides the mechanisms to put these into practice over the next decades.
The insight and input of patients, service users and the public has rightly become a standard part of research. Now research teams must share the reins with public contributors and allow them to take the lead, write Public Contributor Anica Alvarez Nishio and Steven Blackburn, NIHR Research Design Service West Midlands and Keele University’s Public Involvement Lead.
Improving our understanding of how universities can better promote wellbeing and support students is both a research and intervention priority, argues Professor Ed Watkins, Director of the University of Exeter Sir Henry Wellcome Centre for Mood Disorders Research and Professor of Experimental and Applied Clinical Psychology.
COVID-19 has demonstrated the importance of novel and ambitious research designs. Programme Director of NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research Professor Elaine Hay explains why bold methodologies should come to the fore as we face another pressing health issue: multiple long-term conditions.
Dr Esther Mukuka, NIHR Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, states that both policy and actions are crucial in improving diversity and inclusion in research, and reveals what NIHR is doing to break down structural barriers. Her blog marks Black History Month.
As part of World Alzheimer's Month, Professor Martin Rossor, NIHR National Director for Dementia Research, reflects on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected dementia research, and how it might look as we emerge from it.
NIHR has long led the way in partnership working with patients and the public to shape and conduct research in health and social care. In this blog, Jeremy Taylor, NIHR Director for Public Voice, highlights how we plan to improve our work in this area following a series of workshops with the research community and public contributors.
Dr. Judith Auma shows how integrated HIV and cervical screening clinics in Uganda increased screening from 31% to nearly 80% in one year and her recommendations for introducing this into the region.
Glen Garrod, Executive Director of Adult Care and Community Wellbeing at Lincolnshire County Council and former president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), writes about how a new vision for housing and social care research can enable people to transform their care and health, and be more independent.
Dr Hasnain Dalal and Prof Rod Taylor describe how they’ve used several consecutive funding awards from the NIHR to develop, test and implement a new home-based approach to rehabilitation that is now improving lives for people with heart failure.
Marrying a personal touch and the advantages of remote therapy should be the goal of children's digital mental health interventions
Noni Mumba, Head of Engagement at the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP), writes about how she overcame some of the challenges arising during the pandemic to be able to continue her work connecting with the community.
Trudie Lang, Professor of Global Health Research at the University of Oxford and Head of the Global Health Network and Senior Research Scientist in Tropical Medicine at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, reflects on the challenges of translating research into standard practice.
Sandra Jayacodi, public contributor and Chair of the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre Public Advisory Panel, marks Co-production Week by discussing her experiences of being a service user on an award-winning co-produced research project
