The NIHR has awarded more than £4.6 million to 18 projects that support under-represented disciplines and specialisms in research. The 18 funded projects range from research on improving mental health for children with food allergies, to assessing the effectiveness of personal wellbeing planning to prevent depression in cancer survivors.
This is the 4th funding opportunity in a series that is being delivered through the NIHR’s Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) programme. In this round, funding has been awarded to a group of registered health and care professionals (HCPs) - including practitioner psychologists, pharmacists and healthcare scientists - who had not previously been eligible to apply.
Bridging the research gap
To strengthen research capacity across the health and care workforce, all applications were required to be led by early‑career researchers, supported by a senior joint lead applicant acting as mentor, and backed by experienced multidisciplinary teams. This approach reflects the NIHR strategy and its commitment to developing research careers in disciplines and specialisms that have historically been under‑represented.
Registered HCPs make up the largest single workforce group in the NHS, and this funding call forms part of a broader NIHR investment to help more of these professionals build research into their careers.
Professor Kevin Munro, Director of the Research for Patient Benefit Programme, said: “Registered health and care professionals bring invaluable insight to research, yet many haven’t previously had the chance to lead funded studies. This call was designed to change that.
“By supporting early‑career researchers, we’re building a more inclusive research community. I’m delighted that we’re funding 18 innovative projects that will make a real difference to patients and services.”
The 18 funded projects include:
- Assessing the effectiveness of personal wellbeing planning to prevent relapse of depression in cancer survivors.
- Developing a shared decision making tool to help healthcare professionals to support patients in how they take part in a cardiac rehabilitation programme.
- Understanding how digital technology can support older cancer patients to self-manage their medication.
- Co-designing a method to assess community mobility and participation with adults and adolescents with cerebral palsy.
- Trialling an intervention to improve the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people with food allergy.
- Understanding how to better support women when deciding whether to extend hormone therapy after breast cancer treatment.
- Exploring the use of AI to quality check two types of medical imaging scans to enable more consistent image quality, and the earlier detection of technical faults.
- Investigating an intervention to support the mental wellbeing of people with intellectual disabilities.
- Producing a more accurate tool to calculate total radiation doses given to people undergoing multiple radiation treatments.
- Exploring an exercise intervention to help prevent serious stroke in people who have experienced a minor stroke.
- Understanding how touch may help people with long-term lower back pain feel validated in clinical settings.
- Co-designing an intervention to support people with dementia to actively contribute to decisions about their medication.
- Reviewing therapies for children with speech sound disorders to understand what is most effective.
- Determining how to trial a talking therapy programme to support young people who attend complications of excess weight clinics.
- Investigating how pharmacists can help to reduce the risk of harm to children with life limiting conditions from taking multiple medicines
- Investigating a self-care programme for people who have intestinal failure.
- Co-designing a decision tool to help support decision making around stopping medications during palliative care for people from South Asian communities.
- Assessing whether a new type of pacemaker could better protect overall heart function in the first year following device implantation.
Previous RfPB calls supporting under-represented disciplines and specialisms in research have funded projects led by nurses and midwives, methodologists, and allied health professionals.
What’s next?
A further call inviting applications from nurses and midwives has recently closed, with funding announcements expected early 2027. There will be another funding opportunity supporting under-represented HCPs to be announced at the end of 2026.
Regular RfPB funding opportunities continue to welcome applicants from under-represented disciplines.
