05 November 2024
A £5.5 million award for research that will help protect the public from health threats has been secured by the University of Bristol’s Health Protection Research Unit in Evaluation and Behavioural Science (HPRU-EBS).
The funding is part of an £80 million investment from the Department of Health and Social Care through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to Health Protection Research Units (HPRU).
A partnership between UK universities and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), HPRUs conduct studies into long-term public health threats such as antimicrobial resistance, climate change, and acute or emerging threats, such as pandemics, and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear incidents.
Bristol’s HPRU-EBS, led by Professor Matthew Hickman, and Professors Katy Turner and Charles Beck at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), will conduct research to help people and organisations improve their own and the public’s health through reducing infectious disease.
The multidisciplinary team, which includes researchers from Bristol, the University of the West of England (UWE), and the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge, provides expertise in behavioural science, qualitative methods, clinical trials, evidence synthesis, epidemiology, statistical, infectious disease and economic modelling.
Working across five work themes (Co-produce, Optimise, Vaccinate, Evaluate and Eliminate), the team will apply new and advanced research methods using a range of approaches such as promoting vaccinations, testing for infections, reviewing published research, evaluating existing actions and examining how they are put into practice.
Matthew Hickman, Professor in Public Health and Epidemiology in Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences (PHS) and Head of Bristol’s HPRU, said: “We are very pleased that the NIHR has supported the renewal of our HPRU which is a testament to the multiple excellent and impactful research projects our team have collaborated on with UKHSA, and a great opportunity to increase research capacity and training of future research leaders.”
Researchers from UWE and People in the Health West of England (PHWE), will also collaborate with partner organisations and the public to develop an infrastructure aimed at creating sustainable ways of working with under-served and underrepresented communities and strengthening public involvement in research.
Further information
About HPRUs
By delivering high-quality collaborative research, the HPRUs support UKHSA in its objective to protect the health of the public, enabling it to prepare for and respond to major or emerging health protection incidents, as well as building an evidence base for health protection policy and practice.
The aims of the HPRUs are to:
- create an environment where world class health protection research, focused on the needs of the public, can thrive.
- focus on priority areas which will have the greatest impact on public health protection.
- provide high quality research evidence to inform decision-making by public health professionals, policy makers, those involved in operational delivery and service users.
- enable translation of advances in health protection research into benefits for patients, service users and the public.
- increase capacity and capability to conduct high quality, multi-disciplinary health protection research and facilitate knowledge exchange and expertise across universities and UKHSA.
- provide a flexible staff capacity in the event of a major health protection incident and retain a level of responsive research capacity to address emerging health protection research requirements.
- contribute to addressing health inequalities through an increasing focus on underserved communities including relevant interventions, improving health outcomes in the health and care sector and for broader economic gain.
Each HPRU is a centre of excellence in multi-disciplinary health protection research in a distinct priority area. The latest round of funding includes:
- £11 million to an HPRU focused on antimicrobial resistance, where infections become harder to treat, which is one of the biggest public health threats globally.
- The HPRU in Climate Change and Health Security to tackle the health threats from climate change including infectious disease risks, flooding and extreme heat.
- The HPRU in Emerging Zoonoses focuses on emerging diseases that originate in wildlife such as mpox, which pose a significant threat to human health.
- The HPRU in Emergency Preparedness and Response focused on strengthening preparedness for major public health emergencies including pandemics and terrorism.
Additional funding of £3 million is being made through two Health Protection Research Focus Awards on vaccines and immunisation and emergency preparedness and response.
Competitively funded by DHSC since 2014, the HPRUs have successfully supported the health response to major domestic and global emergencies including the Salisbury Novichok poisonings, West Africa Ebola outbreak, COVID-19, and the 2022 and 2024 mpox outbreaks.
Collectively, the HPRUs’ COVID-19 research had national and global impact; informing the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), the Scientific Pandemic Infections Group on Modelling (SPI-M), and guidance published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as well as the World Health Organisation.