Funding Opportunities – W/C 05/09/2022

Drug Related Deaths Among Women in Scotland: PhD opportunity

A fully funded PhD opportunity has arisen exploring drug related deaths in women using Scottish routinely collected data. This Wellcome funded PhD for health professionals is based at the University of Dundee, School of Health Sciences and co-supervised by Dr Louise Marryat, Professor Lesley Colvin, Professor Blair Smith and Dr Rosie Seaman at University of Glasgow, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences. The project will use an existing and unique population wide administrative data set to address the complexity of co-occurring physical and mental conditions, polypharmacy, and social experiences and how these may differ among women who have and have not had a previous non-fatal overdose.

For more information on the study visit: https://www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/mvls/graduateschool/multimorbidity/researchprojects/ 

You may also like to get in touch with Dr Louise Marryat who can share more information on the study and application process: lmarryat001@dundee.ac.uk

Large Grants for Ambitious Research in the Social Sciences: Outline stage

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) are currently seeking proposals for large grant funding for social science-focused research with the potential to generate significant economic or societal impact. Expectations of research projects include:

• Undertake a programme of ambitious and novel research
• Show strong commitment for the career development of researchers
• Involve potential users of research and include a clear strategy for creating impact that improves outcomes for individuals, society and the economy

The deadline to submit proposals is 20th September at 4pm. More information on the call and how to submit a process can be accessed here.

Policy Research Programme: Policy research units

A new funding call has been launched by the NIHR Policy Research Programme for applications to the NIHR Policy research units. One research area within this will be focused on Addictions. This research unit will seek to improve the evidence base for addictions policy for alcohol, drugs, tobacco and gambling. Research themes may include:

• Understanding the determinants of addictive behaviours and dependencies
• The role of industry, including understanding industry’s use of digital platforms
• Investigating the health and wider societal impacts of addictive behaviours, including the impact on affected others
• Identifying effective public health interventions to prevent and treat addiction and optimising their effects in different populations to reduce health inequalities
• The optimal design of integrated services to tackle addiction
• Understanding the barriers and facilitators to policy implementation
• Modelling future trajectories on prevalence and cost implications under a variety of different scenarios
• Evaluating the impact of past and current initiatives to demonstrate impact and influence the design of future policy design and spending decisions

The research units will run from January 2024-December 2028. Deadline for applications is 11th October 2022. For more information on the scheme visit the NIHR website here.

Innovation fund to reduce demand for illicit substances

Another call has been announced by NIHR which is seeking proposals for up to £5m funding focused on developing, evaluating and implementing interventions to reduce and prevent the demand for so called ‘recreational drugs’. This fund will focus on reducing demand, and therefore reducing use of recreational drugs, and will support the development and piloting of new population level interventions, their evaluation and future roll-out in the community. Particular areas of interest include:

• Primary prevention and deterrent interventions to prevent experimental use
• Early intervention approaches and deterrent interventions to prevent problematic or dependent drug use in the future, particularly in the 16-24 and 25+ age ranges

Deadline for submissions is 12th October 2022. More information on the call can be accessed here.