A team of West Country health researchers, including researchers from the University of Bath, have been awarded £9 million from the Government’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to enable them to tackle the area’s most pressing health problems.
The funding will enable new research projects to be carried out that will help develop better health and care for the local population. Research areas will include forecasting demand in hospitals, increasing people’s physical activity levels, supporting people who self-harm and improving outcomes for children in care.
The money is part of a larger £135 million award over five years to 15 pioneering research teams across the country, known as NIHR Applied Research Collaborations (ARCs).
These ARC teams build on the success of the NIHR Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRCs), which the ARCs replace from 1 October 2019. The team in the West Country, NIHR CLAHRC West, has a strong track record of producing impactful research with a range of collaborators.
The CLAHRC West team has worked on diverse projects including evaluating patient safety tools and the roll out of an intervention to reduce cerebral palsy in premature babies with the West of England Academic Health Science Network (AHSN), exploring the experiences of Somali families affected by autism, creating harm reduction materials with people who inject drugs and improving how healthcare professionals respond to signs of domestic violence and abuse.
Professor Chris Whitty, NIHR Lead and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department of Health and Social Care, said:
"The unique local collective approach at each NIHR Applied Research Collaboration will support applied health and care research that responds to, and meets, the needs of local patients, and local health and care systems. The network will also be able to tackle health priorities at a national level.”
Find out more here.