Queen Mary University of London is part of a medical research collaboration that has been awarded £9 million of Government funding to address public health challenges in the south-east.
The group is one of 13 Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRCs) across the country to receive a share of £124million as part of a national initiative.
The collaboration between UCLPartners – which Queen Mary is a founding member of – London universities, local authorities, industry and charities will work together to carry out pioneering research focused on the needs of its patients and service users.
Projects will include looking at how to improve the management of mental and physical health problems in young people; and undertaking a school-based asthma evaluation and delivering a targeted intervention to children with poor asthma control.
The CLAHRC London: City North and East, covers north central and north east London, south and west Hertfordshire, south Bedfordshire and south west and mid Essex. In addition to receiving £9 million in funding over five years from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), the collaboration has also secured matched funding worth £34 million from its partner organisations.
The funding will be invested in researching innovative treatments and speeding the uptake of new techniques to benefit patients across a population of six million people.
Jonathan Grigg, Deputy Director of the CLAHRC, and Professor of Paediatric Respiratory and Environmental Medicine at Queen Mary, said: "This investment will assist us to develop new links both within our existing partners and between us and our local population. It will directly address the barriers to improving the health of children and adults with long-term conditions."
Professor Mike Curtis, Deputy Vice-Principal (Health) at Queen Mary said: “This collaboration and the associated funding will lead to genuine advances in the delivery of innovative treatments and services and, importantly, will address the challenges of inequalities in health and care delivery. These aims are central to the mission of the university and our commitment to our local populations.
“We look forward with great excitement to working with our colleagues within UCLPartners to achieve these goals.”
The CLAHRC will draw on its existing extensive academic and clinical collaborations, and the depth of expertise of its partners, to deliver improvements in five different themes:
• Innovations in systems and models of healthcare
• Methodological innovation
• Optimising behaviour and engagement with care
• Empowering mental health service users and families
• Child and adolescent health
Research teams will collaborate across the themes to tackle a wide range of health issues from multiple angles.
For media information, contact: