One year on as Director of Programme Grants

By Professor Marian Knight MBE, Programme Director at NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research)

It's just over a year since I took over as Programme Director for the Programme Grants for Applied Research and Programme Development Grants schemes. I thought it was time therefore to update you on some of the initiatives that we've introduced and some of the new exciting developments coming up.

Full economic costs funding model?

As many of you will be aware, we moved this year to a full economic costs funding model. This has unsurprisingly led to a significant increase in the costs of the grants submitted to the scheme. While this was anticipated and planned for in our budgeting, the substantially higher costs have led to discussions with my committees, chairs and the programme team around assessing the value for money of proposed research programmes. I thought it would be helpful to outline the considerations that the committee has been taking into account when assessing value for money.?

We are very keen that programmes do not extend for longer lengths of time than the typical five to six years, because we want to ensure that patient, public and carer benefit is realised in a timely way. The length of the research programme is clearly an important driver of cost, and we therefore continue to examine timelines very closely. A second element we scrutinise carefully is the level of indirect costs applied by institutions. We have observed that for some proposals these costs represent almost half of the proposed budget and as a committee we did not feel that this represented good value.?

This also led the committee to note that disproportionate proportions of higher education institution indirect costs indicated that perhaps some of the research was moving away from being embedded within health, public health and care settings. We agreed that maintaining close links with the settings where research was carried out was an important principle of the scheme we wished to emphasise, and which would form an important part of our committee assessment going forwards.

Targeted funding calls

I just wanted to make you aware of two forthcoming developments coming up. We will shortly be introducing rolling targeted funding calls to address priorities identified by James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnerships and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), joining with other NIHR programmes that have been running similar calls for some time.?

Fast-track application process

We will also be introducing a new?fast-track application process which will enable researchers to apply to have their programme proposals considered directly in a stage two committee without requiring a stage one application. Two types of research programmes will be eligible.?

Firstly, time sensitive research, for example programmes to evaluate natural experiments where timeliness is critical. If the case for time-critical assessment is made, this type of fast-track application will be considered by a specially convened committee, enabling research to begin around 14 weeks after the initial submission.?

We will also be piloting a fast-track scheme for “seed funded” research. In our pilot this scheme will be open to programmes which lead on from research funded in:

• NIHR?Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) scheme
• Health and Care Research Wales (HCRW)?Research For Patient and Public Benefit (RfPPB) scheme
• HCRW Integrated Funding Scheme?
• Scotland's Chief Scientist Office Response mode funding schemes

NIHR PGfAR DHSC areas of research interest 1: early action to prevent poor health outcomes

Finally, I'd like to direct you to the?guidance about our?autumn funding call which is ring fenced to address the Department of Health and Social Care Areas of Research Interest 1 (AR1) which is focused on early action to prevent poor outcomes.? We are also welcoming applications which target devolved nations' priorities with a focus on prevention and early diagnosis, for example as set out in A healthier Wales: long term plan for health and social care, the NHS Scotland NHS Recovery Plan and the Department of Health NI 's Transformation Programme.?

For this funding round we will not be accepting applications covering other topics, we expect all applications to be firmly grounded in the research areas identified within DHSC AR1 (prevention and early diagnosis) and also within the equivalent devolved nations documents. I'd like to emphasise that our usual funding calls will continue with a round opening in February, therefore if you have a programme of work with a different focus please postpone submission until the following round. I would caution against attempting to shoehorn a proposal which doesn’t really meet the brief into this ring-fenced call as it is unlikely to be prioritised by the committee. I would, however, like to point out the breadth of priorities that are identified within ARI1 which includes topics such as obesity, cancer, diabetes and mental health.

If you have any questions about any of the new developments or would like to submit a pre-submission enquiry, please contact the Programme Grants team: [email protected]

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This blog was originally published on the NIHR website on 7 October 2024.