The second ground breaking scheme for Developing Innovative, Inclusive and Diverse Public Partnerships opened in August 2023 and is now closed.
This annual funding opportunity supports the development of inclusive and/or new ways of partnership working between researchers, people and communities.
Webinar
We held a webinar on 26 July 2023 where attendees could learn more about the second round of this funding opportunity and ask questions. If you would like to see a video of the webinar, please email pgfar@nihr.ac.uk.
Find out more about the call
You can read a personal perspective from our public contributor Anica Alvarez Nishio below, on how and why this opportunity was set up. You can find out more information about the NIHR Programme Development Grants call for Developing Innovative, Inclusive and Diverse Public Partnerships in the call brief.
We also have a short video that explains more about the funding call, with an accessible video transcript. In addition, we have produced a Frequently Asked Questions document that supported the first funding round, which you may find helpful.
Get in touch
We are a really friendly team – do please get in touch with us at pgfar@nihr.ac.uk or call us on 020 8843 8056.
Taking a bold step - Public Contributor Anica Alvarez Nishio explains the background to the call
“In 2022, we took a bold new step.
We turned research on its head. Recognising that usually academics come up with the research ideas and then get members of the public to comment, or sometimes participate, we decided to do the opposite. This time community groups and charities collaborated with researchers to develop their ideas, apply for funding, and make the research happen.
The idea is to fund projects which look into the issues that local communities feel are of the greatest importance to them – what they feel will best address their needs.
The first round took place in late 2022 and was the most successful programme development grant funding round in PGfAR’s history. We received 35 applications and funded 16 of them, giving out almost £2m of funding - you can see more details in the minutes from our committee meeting. The contracts for these projects are being drawn up now and we hope most of these will begin their research from the summer of 2023.
We have published case studies of a selection of successful applications that we funded so that applicants can get an idea of the type of research we are interested in:
- No research about us, without us! Removing research barriers for people with learning disabilities
- Increasing accessibility of affordable healthy food to adults living with Severe Mental Illness in Middlesbrough
- Removing barriers to inclusion and building strong foundations of partnership and trust with under-served groups
- Participatory Arts in Health and Care Research (PAIR)
- Creating energetic and sustainable community research partnerships. Developing the Co-production and Peer Research (CoPPer) network to improve health and reduce inequality
All of the funded applications shared common features that made them worth funding, specifically these applications:
- Demonstrated genuine co-production and were authentically community-led
- Had an equal distribution of funding between the community partner and researchers
- Had clear reach into under-served communities
- Were novel, using creative ways of serving better those traditionally under-served
- Had clear plans to bring sustainable benefit to communities beyond the time of the funding award
- Had excellent follow-on research plans that could lead to a larger programme of research and/or had clear benefits for the PDG and PGfAR funding schemes more broadly
This funding opportunity puts patients, community groups, charities and the public in control to suggest research which brings meaningful, on-the-ground benefit where it is needed most. If you have a good idea, or just want to know a little bit more about how we are using the power of NIHR to make meaningful change to communities across England, we would love to hear from you.”