NIHR GOSH BRC Paediatric Excellence Initiative New Projects Funding Call

Applications are welcome from all staff substantively employed by our partner hospitals Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital or Sheffield Children’s Hospital, including clinicians, non-clinical, nursing, AHP, psychologists, pharmacists and health care scientist staff and any others not mentioned here. Honorary employees of our partner hospitals may be considered where they are primarily working with the relevant Trust for the majority of their employment (please contact the BRC to discuss).

Applications submitted through the call should seek to propose novel research ideas around therapies, biomarkers, diagnostics and surgical innovations, including proof of concept, validation studies, new methodologies, novel uses of data and/or PPIE activity related to the BRC themes. We would expect successful applicants to generate preliminary data to support future grant application and patent applications, and ultimately to accelerate the likelihood of the new interventions delivering patient benefit for children and young people with rare and complex conditions.

Projects may be based in the lab, the clinic, or be data driven, and can focus on human cells, tissues, participants, or data. Projects may be preclinical or clinical, but NIHR rules for BRCs mean basic science projects (i.e. not translational) or clinical projects supporting phase III trials are not eligible.

The BRC is not allowed to support any research using animals, but as a portion of funding will be coming from GOSH Children’s Charity, it may be possible for projects to include a small component of animal work within a wider project. If you wish to include any animal work in your application, please discuss this with us before applying.

Projects will need to be within the remit of one or more of our research themes and cross-theme projects are also encouraged as well as collaborative projects across GOSH/ICH and our partner sites.

Applicants can request non-pay costs as well as salary costs. There is no upper limit for what applicants can apply for, but we would typically expect applicants to request between £25,000 - £75,000. We expect projects solely focused on PPIE activities to request between £250 - £2,000. You can apply for co-funding through this call where you have secured funding from another source for part of a project.

GOSH BRC team will be holding a webinar and will present briefly about the funding call, expectations for applicants and common areas of feedback from previous calls for successful and unsuccessful applications. We encourage all applicants to join the webinar and the Zoom details for the call can be found below.

Thursday 11 January, 2.00pm – 3.00pm, via Zoom

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83812243390?pwd=bE1iTGY2ZzF5eUJHVmIwYkdrd1BLQT09

Meeting ID: 838 1224 3390

Passcode: 339265

We will also be holding a Q&A session for any applicant to drop in to ask questions about the call. The Zoom details for the Q&A session can be found below.

Monday 29 January, 1.00pm – 2.00pm, via Zoom

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87333707704?pwd=RTRUc1pnZmtXb01WMTh5K0JCUmlFUT09

Meeting ID: 873 3370 7704

Passcode: 820119

• The deadline for applications is Tuesday 20 February 2024.
• Applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application in mid-March and the funding will be available from 01 April 2024.
• A Review Panel, the membership of which will include representatives from the BRC’s Leadership Team, each BRC Theme, the Paediatric Excellence Initiative and the BRC Junior Faculty, in addition to external and internal members of academic staff, will assess applications using criteria outlined in the guidance document.
• A lay member of the Panel will review the plain English summary and PPIE section of each application form to ensure patient/public views are considered in the selection process.
• Applications will be anonymised before being sent to the Review Panel.
• To apply please read and complete the Guidance and Application form and submit an electronic copy as a word document to brc@gosh.nhs.uk.

Please contact brc@gosh.nhs.uk if you have any questions about the scheme.