Last week I had the opportunity to join colleagues at the Millennium Stadium for the launch of Health and Care Research Wales. This is the new name for what was, until very recently, the National Institute for Social Care and Health Research (NISCHR).
I’ve written before about the reorganisation of the research infrastructure here in Wales (see here and here), and Thursday’s event was an important unveiling of the outcome of recent deliberations. For a shortcut, here’s the public information video:
And, for a single-page diagram of how everything is fitting together, follow this link. As this shows, one of the things Health and Care Research Wales has done is to (re)commission a number of Centres and Units, an example of the former being the National Centre for Mental Health (NCMH).
By the looks of things, funding streams are to remain much as they were under NISCHR, with opportunities for PhD, post-doctoral and project awards to follow. Researchers in Wales can continue applying for support to many (but not all) of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) programmes. This is vital, because it is through this mechanism that funding is available for studies into health services and delivery (amongst other things). This is an area of research in which Wales has no dedicated funding stream of its own, and in which the new Centres and Units may be interested to varying degrees.
Finally, a word on a Welsh Government centrepiece, HealthWise Wales. This is aiming to prospectively, and electronically, recruit many thousands of people into future health and social care research.
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