The NIHR is one of the main funders of public health research in the UK. Public health research falls within the remit of a range of NIHR Directly Funded Research (Programmes and Training Awards), and NIHR Infrastructure Support.
This Public Health Portfolio (Infrastructure Support) dataset contains NIHR infrastructure supported projects where funding is allocated to provide support to research. This research may not be NIHR funded. For more information about NIHR infrastructure, see the information page here.
A separate Public Health Portfolio (Directly Funded Research - Programmes and Training Awards) dataset which you can find here, contains NIHR directly funded research, where the funding is allocated to an award holder or host organisation to carry out a specific piece of research or complete a training award.
This Public Health Portfolio (Infrastructure Support) dataset includes NIHR infrastructure supported projects from the 2019/20 financial year onwards and is updated annually. Projects may appear as duplicates if they have been reported by multiple infrastructure centres and/or in multiple financial years. Users can search for NIHR infrastructure supported projects schemes by financial year. The dataset excludes the NIHR Research Delivery Network (RDN).
An agreed inclusion/exclusion criteria is used to categorise NIHR infrastructure supported projects as public health (see below). Infrastructure supported projects are not second level coded to the Public Health Outcomes Framework domains.
Inclusion Criteria
The NIHR Public Health Overview project team worked with colleagues across NIHR public health research to define the inclusion criteria for NIHR public health research.
NIHR infrastructure supported projects are categorised as public health if they are determined to be ‘investigations of interventions in, or studies of, populations that are anticipated to have an effect on health or on health inequity at a population level.’ This definition of public health is intentionally broad to capture the wide range of NIHR public health research across prevention, health improvement, health protection, and healthcare services (both within and outside of NHS settings).
This dataset does not reflect the NIHR’s total investment in public health research. The intention is to showcase a subset of the wider NIHR public health portfolio.
This dataset does not include public health awards or projects funded by any of the three NIHR Research Schools. Therefore, awards from the NIHR Schools for Public Health, Primary Care and Social Care do not feature in this portfolio. You can find information on the projects funded by the three NIHR Research Schools here on NIHR Open Data. NIHR Public Health Policy Research Unit projects are also currently excluded from the dataset.
Disclaimers
Users of this dataset should acknowledge the broad definition of public health that has been used to develop the inclusion criteria for this dataset. This caveat applies to all data within the dataset.
Please note that this dataset is currently subject to a limited data quality review. We are working to improve our data collection methodologies.
Please also note that some projects may also appear in other NIHR curated datasets.
Further Information
Further information on NIHR’s investment in public health research can be found as follows:
NIHR School for Public Health here.
NIHR Public Health Policy Research Unit here.
NIHR Health Protection Research Units here.
NIHR Public Health Research Programme Health Determinants Research Collaborations (HDRC) here.
NIHR Public Health Research Programme Public Health Intervention Responsive Studies Teams (PHIRST) here.