£42 million for research into children's health

Childhood obesity, infant mortality and keeping children safe in the home are three areas of research which will benefit from £42 million of government funding, it’s been announced.

In total, 25 research teams will be funded by the National Institute for Health Research to investigate a wide range of chronic and debilitating health conditions. These include angina, long-term neurological conditions, skin disease and the effectiveness of vitamin D for preventing acute respiratory illness.

The programmes of research aim to increase understanding of how to manage and treat these types of diseases more effectively, develop new treatments and help prevent ill health developing in the first place.

This new government funding will improve health outcomes for patients in England, with particular emphasis on conditions that cause chronic distress to patients and that are a significant issue for the NHS to manage. It will also enable NHS trusts to tackle areas of high priority for patients.

Dawn Primarolo said:

"These research programmes represent a substantial investment that may help us to discover how to reduce childhood injuries, improve the quality of care for patients with angina or better help pregnant women who are obese.

"These are vital areas of study and I wish the researchers well with their work."

Professor Sally C. Davies, Director of Research and Development, Department of Health said:

"These grants will encourage some of our leading researchers to develop innovative and practical solutions for conditions that affect millions people in this country. I am delighted that we are funding such a broad range of programmes and am impressed by the calibre of the applications."

Programme Grants for Applied Research are prestigious awards supporting teams of leading researchers, from the NHS and academia working together, who have already demonstrated an impressive track-record of achievement in applied health research. They will support work directed towards delivering research findings that have practical application for the benefit of patients. These research programmes will look to improve health care or better health care delivery, within a 3-5 year time scale.

The programmes will provide stability of funding to support the long-term development of top quality applied research groups working in the NHS.