UKRI GCRF Health and Context call 2019 – outline
https://mrc.ukri.org/funding/browse/ukri-gcrf/ukri-gcrf-health-and-context-call-2019-outline/
Deadline: Outline stage – 02nd April 2019, Full stage (invited only) – 12th September 2019
Amount: Minimum of £1m and maximum of £2m
Duration: 3 years
UKRI has made up to £20 million available for the UKRI GCRF Health and Context call.
The UKRI GCRF Health and Context call is seeking proposals for interdisciplinary research addressing wider contextual factors contributing to the burden of infectious and non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
These factors may include social, cultural, historical, and religious beliefs and practices, or wider biological, ecological and environmental factors.
This call is being led jointly by the MRC, ESRC, AHRC, NERC, and BBSRC, and applications may fall within the remit of any of, or across, these councils.
UKRI want to fund consortia conducting ambitious research that:
- goes beyond description to determine causal relationships between contextual influences and health
- develops or tests feasible interventions that are sensitive to or mitigate contextual influences on health.
Applications from across the spectrum of basic to applied research are eligible for this call.
Subject areas may comprise, but are not limited to:
- contextual drivers of non-communicable or infectious disease risk (such as contaminated drinking water, agriculture and food production, hygiene, sexual behaviours, air pollution, work practices, wider land-use and environmental changes)
- contextually driven barriers to management and treatment of infection/NCD, which may include altered diagnostic, vaccine or drug efficacy
- feasible interventions that take account of or mitigate contextual drivers of increased rates of infection/NCD
- identification and management of clusters of coexisting health conditions (multimorbidities) that are particularly prevalent in a particular community.
Projects may seek to determine the extent to which contextual factors influence rates of NCD/infection, and/or how this influence can be accounted for or mitigated through culturally-sensitive intervention.
UKRI encourage applications where the contextual factors identified are common to multiple locations within or across LMIC settings.
Where appropriate, applicants should engage with communities in the research planning process, and for applied research, engage with local, regional, and national stakeholders to maximise impact.
UKRI encourage the engagement of community stakeholders in the development and implementation of proposals to allow a deep understanding of context.
To help maximise impact, applicants should ensure that research questions, methods and outcomes are relevant to the communities in which they are working.
Successfully addressing the above challenges will require an understanding of:
- the influence that society, history, culture, religion, and the environment might have on risk behaviours and care seeking behaviour, and culturally sensitive approaches to addressing these
- community centred approaches to data collection and sharing to enable better management and prediction of infectious diseases and NCDs.
- The research team can be drawn from any relevant academic discipline. This call is open to UK-based PIs and applications directly from PIs at LMIC research organisations.
Given the scale of the awards and the need to demonstrate tangible impact, applicants are required to provide evidence of substantial, relevant preliminary work, existing relationships with stakeholders in the location where the project will take place, and existing partnerships with other named researchers. These existing partnerships may be added to by the proposed work to create a consortium of varied expertise.
Awards funded through this call will build and strengthen UK-LMIC partnerships and should incorporate research training and capacity building activities.
Please ensure to read the full call text, guidance, and FAQ available through the link above.
Anyone who would like to know more about GCRF, ODA or the work that Newcastle University is doing in this area is advised to contact Dr Elisa Lawson: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/work-with-us/support/people/profile/elisalawsonnclacuk.html#background
Further information on GCRF can be found here: https://newcastle.sharepoint.com/hub/fundingtoolkit/Pages/globalchallenges_funding_globalchallenges-researchfund.aspx