The UK Department of Health announced 45m in funding for 29 important and substantial research programmes as part of the National Institute for Health Research into areas such as mental health, medicines for children, diabetes, stroke, and dementias, neurodegenerative diseases and neurology.
The programmes of research aim to increase understanding of how to manage and treat these types of diseases more effectively, develop new treatments and help prevent ill health developing in the first place.
This new government funding will improve health outcomes for patients in England with particular emphasis on conditions that cause chronic distress to patients and that are a significant issue for the NHS to manage. It will also enable NHS trusts to tackle areas of high priority for patients.
Health Minister Rosie Winterton said:
“This significant new research funding stream, which will be worth up to ?75 million each year when fully established, provides a marvellous opportunity for the NHS to carry out research that will lead to improved health care or better health care delivery in the near future. The first awards focus on developing medicines specifically for children, and research into diabetes, stroke, mental health, dementias and other neurodegenerative diseases, all of which are health areas that are central to the government’s key concerns.”
The 29 research programmes include one that looks to increase equity of access to high quality mental health services in primary care, management of challenging behaviour in dementia at home and in care homes and improve physical health in people with severe mental illness.
Programme Grants for Applied Research are prestigious awards supporting teams of leading researchers, from the NHS and academia working together, who have already demonstrated an impressive track-record of achievement in applied health research. They will support work directed towards delivering research findings that have practical application for the benefit of patients. These looked for benefits would be through improved health care or better health care delivery, within a 3-5 year time scale.
The projects will provide stability of funding to support the long-term development of top quality applied research groups working in the NHS.