Inflammation-mediated diseases present a global healthcare challenge, causing a significant adverse impact on individuals’ quality of life and a substantial economic strain on healthcare systems.
The Inflammation and Immunity Research Driver Programme will explore inflammation and immunity as general underpinning mechanisms, initially focusing on highly prevalent respiratory and allergic diseases. These conditions can be exacerbated by acute inflammatory episodes due to viral infections and environmental factors such as pollution, tobacco, pollen, weather, drugs, foods stinging insects etc.
“Respiratory conditions still unnecessarily blight and claim the lives of far too many people in the UK and globally. We aim to utilise the UK’s outstanding health and health-related data asset, and work with members of the public, colleagues and partners across the UK, to provide key policy and clinical insights that will improve respiratory outcomes for the UK’s population. We will then take the insights from these experiences in respiratory medicine and use these to catalyse similar improvements for other inflammatory and immune-mediated conditions.” Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh, Professor of Primary Care Research & Development and Director of the Usher Institute at The University of Edinburgh
“This is a fantastic opportunity to improve the quality of data recording and use of data to better respiratory outcomes for people in the UK and to expand this learning to other diseases which will ultimately be included in the Inflammation and Immunity driver programme.”
Professor Jennifer Quint, Professor of Respiratory Epidemiology at Imperial College London
Cross-Driver Programme – Health Economics fellowship call
HDR UK and Queen’s University Belfast have launched a cross-Driver funding call for a Health Economics Fellow to advance research at the intersection of health economics and data science. With funding of up to £250K over three years (April 2025–March 2028), this fellowship offers a unique opportunity for an early-career researcher to explore the societal and policy impacts of health data. Sitting in the Big Data for Complex Disease Programme, the Fellow will also collaborate across other Driver Programmes, using diverse datasets to address inequalities, improve care, and inform health policies across the UK.
For more information on this call, please follow the link here to the webpage.
