The Academy of Medical Sciences is launching a new grant scheme for the health social sciences and medical humanities, designed to address the recommendations of its latest report.
Last year, the Academy, with the support of the Wellcome Trust, launched a new career-enhancing scheme, Springboard, to support biomedical researchers at their first independent position.
The Academy is now pleased to extend this offer to early career researchers working in health social sciences and medical humanities, through a new call under its Springboard scheme umbrella, Springboard – Health of the Public 2040.
The Academy had identified that a crucial career step comes for many researchers when they move from a research group to establish their own independent group. The highly competitive nature of grant schemes coupled with their limited availability means many abandon the research career path.
The new Springboard – Health of the Public 2040 awards will be aligned to the recommendations of the Academy’s report Improving the health of the public by 2040, published today. The report recommended that maintaining a healthy population requires more than just medical interventions, and that research into the health of the public should take a systems view of all the factors coming together to determine health.
Medical research traditionally focuses to prevent, treat and cure disease from a biological perspective, and does not address, for example, the social, behavioural, political and cultural issues that contribute to health inequalities. The new grants are designed to address this gap in research.
Springboard – Health of the Public 2040 offers funding of up to £50,000 over two years and a bespoke package of career support to researchers at the start of their first independent post. Like the original Springboard scheme, these are grants for researchers in their first independent post, designed to help them in their transition to independence.
Applicants must be working on projects addressing the themes and recommendations that have emerged from the Academy’s Improving the health of the public by 2040 report.
The deadline for applications is on Monday 12th December 2016, 5pm. Applications will be considered by the selection panel, which will meet in February 2017. In this call, £1m is available for funding. Decisions will be communicated at the end of February 2017.
The new Springboard – Health of the public 2040 call is supported by the Wellcome Trust.