Published: 17 December 2018
The Global Maternal and Neonatal Health funding call, to be launched on 16 January 2019, is a joint initiative between the Medical Research Council (MRC; part of UK Research & Innovation), partly funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), and the NIHR. The purpose of the call is to address the burden of maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity in low and middle income countries (LMICs), by funding high-quality proposals across the spectrum of basic to applied research. Awards will support multidisciplinary research, build and strengthen research partnerships, and promote capacity building in global maternal and neonatal health research. Applications are particularly encouraged from Principal Investigators based at organisations in LMICs, as well as from eligible research organisations based in the UK working in equitable partnership with LMIC colleagues.
This is the first of three annual calls. It is expected that £20-30m will be made available across the three calls to support research grants up to three years in duration and seed-funding grants up to one year’s duration. For the first call we particularly encourage proposals focusing on the period of pregnancy and birth, although pre-conception and postpartum applications will be considered.
The GCRF is a £1.5 billion fund announced by the UK Government in 2015 to support research addressing the challenges faced by LMICs. MRC is a GCRF delivery partner and their contribution to this call is from their GCRF allocation. This complements the UK Government funding of the NIHR Global Health Research (GHR) Programme which delivers internationally-outstanding applied global health research for the direct and primary benefit of patients and the public in LMICs.
The GCRF and NIHR GHR Programme forms part of the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitment. Applications must demonstrate the research to be primarily relevant and directly linked to near-term or long-term benefits to the health and economic development of LMICs. Applications should articulate a clear and specific case for the relevance of the proposed research to the LMIC and identify and provide evidence that the proposed plan of research is informed by the needs of the LMIC. Further guidance on ODA and demonstrating ODA compliance in applications for funding is available via the ODA guidance document on the UKRI GCRF website.