London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The collaborative of health researchers across UCLPartners, world-leading London universities, the Greater London Authority, local authorities, industry and charities, is one of 13 teams in the country to receive a share of £124 million as part of a national initiative.

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) announced the designation of these 13 Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) initiatives, which are based across the country. CLAHRCs are academic and clinical collaborations that conduct innovative research and then support its translation into practice for the benefit of patients and the population.

The CLAHRC London: City North and East, covers north central and north east London, south and west Hertfordshire, south Bedfordshire and south west and mid Essex. In addition to the £9 million in funding over five years from the NIHR, the collaboration has also secured matched funding worth £34 million from NHS trusts, higher education institutions, clinical commissioning groups, the Greater London Authority, local authorities, industry and the voluntary and community sector groups.

The funding will be invested in researching innovative treatments and speeding the uptake of new techniques to benefit patients across a population of six million people. It will help ensure patients benefit from new treatments and techniques that could revolutionise the future of healthcare.

Jan van der Meulen, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and the lead researcher from the School working on the initiative said: "I'm delighted that the UCLPartners bid to host a Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care has been successful. It opens up an unprecedented opportunity for the School to collaborate closely with a wide range of NHS organisations and universities in North and East London and surrounding areas.

“The CLAHRC programme will deliver research that responds to the increasing structural and organisational complexity in health, social care and public health services."

The CLAHRC draws on its existing extensive academic and clinical collaborations, and the depth of expertise of its partners, to deliver improvements in five different themes: 

• Innovations in systems and models of healthcare
• Methodological innovation
• Optimising behaviour and engagement with care
• Empowering mental health service users and families
• Child and adolescent health

Research teams will collaborate across the themes to tackle a wide range of health issues from multiple angles. For example, improving the management of mental and physical health problems in young people; and undertaking a school-based asthma evaluation and delivering a targeted intervention to children with poor asthma control.