Crunch time for NIHR’s global health programme

Four years after launching, the NIHR’s international health programme is entering a phase of renewal

We are in a critical period for the National Institute of Health Research’s Global Health programme. Launched in 2016—and profiled by Funding Insight at the time—the programme has supported a raft of projects in the Global South. Now the programme’s two most important schemes, Global Health Research Groups and Global Health Research Units, are open, and a third major scheme—Global Health Research Centres—will launch in a few days.  

The groups and units calls both close on 18 November and both seek to strengthen thematic partnerships between research teams based in the UK and colleagues in low and middle income (LMIC) countries. The groups call offers up to £3 million over three to four years for researchers to set up new collaborations and plug gaps in global health expertise, often by bringing together new disciplines. A step up in scale, the units call offers up to £7m over five years. It aims to strengthen existing collaborations between researchers in the UK and colleagues based in poorer countries. Additionally, there will be a second pair of calls for units and groups closing on 18 May 2021, to which applicants to the first call will not be eligible to apply. The NIHR is operating a single assessment process in both cases.