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Professional development and training

We fund various professional development courses, training programmes and fellowships to help further the careers of public health and social care practitioners. 

The training opportunities are designed to help you to develop your skills in understanding, using and producing evidence to support public health and social care policy, practice and commissioning.

You can learn more about the current opportunities via the descriptions and links below.

Fellowship schemes and short placement awards

Through our NIHR Academy and School for Public Health Research, we run a programme of fellowship schemes and short placement awards that support individuals based within local authority settings to develop as health and/or social care researchers whilst retaining their existing employment and salary.

These include: 

  • Pre-Doctoral Local Authority Fellowship  Scheme *
  • Doctoral Local Authority Fellowship Scheme *
  • Local Authority Short Placement Award for Research Collaboration *

* please note - these schemes are only available in England

Find out more about the awards and who can apply

Population Health Career Scientist Award

Our Population Health Career Scientist Award (PHCSA) is a UK-wide initiative to enable local government to become more research-active and help answer the most important research questions facing policymakers and services at local and national levels.  The PHCSA is open to senior researchers to make the next step to Reader/Professor level in their host institutions. 

Career development and leadership awards for Social Care professionals

Through our School for Social Care Research, we offer opportunities across a range of experience levels designed to help you to develop your skills as a social care researcher.

Career development awards

These awards recognise the complexity and variety of current pathways for a research career in adult social care. They offer you the opportunity to develop your research capacity while you continue to contribute to the research effort. 

Developing research leadership awards

These awards are open to those who are looking to develop adult social care research and capacity by leading significant research projects or programmes and managing other researchers. 

Practice-based research leaders awards

These awards support senior social care practitioners to develop research skills to allow them to become research leaders in their organisations, and by doing so become research champions within the adult social care sector.

Find out more about the School for Social Care Research awards

Internships and training workshops

Our School for Public Health Research (SPHR) offers summer internships in public health research. These are for undergraduate students with an interest in a career in public health research. The funded internships offer support for six – eight-week projects supervised by SPHR Early Career Researcher (ECRs), Fellows and PhD students. 

Find out more about the summer internships in public health research

Our School for Social Care Research offers internships, launched every Spring, to support junior social care practitioners embarking on an adult social care research career.

We also provide a  series of training workshops and events covering methodological topics and research skills development. View our scheduled workshops

Find out more about our internships in social care

NIHR Incubators

Our Incubators have been created to support capacity building in priority areas such as public health and social care.  They create communities that support networking opportunities and provide bespoke training opportunities as well as opportunities to share best practice. 

The Incubator communities welcome all those who wish to pursue academic careers in public health and social care, as well as those who support and mentor aspirant researchers in the area.

Find out more about our Public Health Incubator. 

Find out more about our Social Care Incubator.