MRC Applied Global Health Partnership

Funding to support partnerships that enable research that addresses global health challenges and inequities.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) is running this opportunity with funding from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to support partnerships that enable research that addresses global health challenges and inequities.

The opportunity will support strategically important, original partnerships providing a distinct and important contribution to the research landscape. The partnerships should be driven by the research needs of the low and middle-income country (LMIC) involved.

Applicants can apply for funding for a partnership to address any health topic of relevance in the context where the research will be conducted.

Partnerships should be linked to high-quality research programmes and should demonstrate how the partnership will facilitate future applied research. The aim is to fund a portfolio of high-quality global partnerships, which will impact current and future applied research, be diverse, promote multidisciplinarity and strengthen global health research capacity.

The opportunity will support cross-sector partnerships combining expertise to meet a global health challenge. Applicants can include a broad range of partners, including non-academic partners, between diverse groups of researchers. These partnerships must:

• Establish new, high-value collaborative activities or capabilities.
• Add value to high-quality scientific programmes that are already supported by grants from MRC and other funders.

Applications are accepted from principal investigators based in LMICs and the UK, working in partnership with LMIC investigators. All applicants are required to develop plans to strengthen research capacity within their proposal.

Collaborative activities can include:

• Networking and partnership activities to:
  • Establish multidisciplinary collaborative partnerships or consortia.
  • Foster and enabling strategy in this area.
  • Enable knowledge sharing or creation across institutions.
• Infrastructure support for establishing a unique shared resource or helping to exploit it, for example:
  • Staff.
  • Systems.
  • Equipment.
  • Seminars.
  • Workshops.
  • Activities such as specialist data and software platforms or resources.

Small scale, pump-priming projects may be supported, but the focus of the project should not be on specific research questions. These should be interdisciplinary, high-risk and high-gain projects that would exemplify the partnership’s novel capability.

Projects can last up to five years, although projects typically last three to four years.

Prospective applicants are advised that the applied global health funding opportunity is now split into separate ‘research’ and ‘partnership’ outline application processes. Applicants are advised to read both this ‘applied global health partnership’ funding opportunity and the ‘applied global health research‘ funding opportunity before deciding which one is the best fit for their application.