Published: 05 May 2020
The Department of Health and Social Care is now recognised as an official Associate Member of the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD), which means that the NIHR will continue to contribute to GACD calls through its partnership with the MRC.
GACD is an alliance of international public funding agencies supporting research activities intended to improve the prevention and treatment of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, mental ill-health and cancers.
The alliance coordinates and supports research activities that address the prevention and treatment of chronic NCDs on a global scale. NCDs account for 60% of deaths globally.
The NIHR Global Health Research Programme supports areas of applied health research and training that are underfunded or where there is an unmet need. NIHR has a strong interest in pursuing applied global health research in low- and middle-income countries, and has already been contributing to the GACD annual funding calls in partnership with the UK MRC, including the current call on cancer prevention.
Previously the NIHR contributed to the GACD research call on Mental health, which was first announced in Novemeber last year and focused on child, adolescent and adult age onset mental disorders.
The NIHR has also contributed to the GACD Scale up call, which focuses on scaling-up evidence-based interventions at the population level for the prevention or management of hypertension and/or diabetes.