I3: Building Critical Mass, Increasing Scale and Impact for Palliative Care through International Collaboration

Project Description

The world population is ageing and, with the growth of multi-morbidities, UK deaths are expected to increase by 40% by 2040. New models of care and treatments are urgently needed to improve quality of life for the significantly increased numbers of people living with life-limiting illnesses. Yet, research activity remains extremely limited, with a severe lack of critical mass of academics and research centres to build the palliative care evidence base.

The Wolfson Palliative Care Research Centre, University of Hull, has an established collaboration with the Improving Palliative and Chronic Care through Clinical Research and Translation (IMPACCT) group in the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. We want to strengthen this fruitful collaboration to build essential capacity for the UK and global palliative care research base.

The Bid: We will increase the extent and scale of our existing collaboration through joint research that will deliver economic and social impact, contributing to the UK Government’s Grand Challenge of meeting the social and healthcare needs of a rapidly ageing population.

This bid will enable:
i) an exchange visit programme at professorial, senior lecturer, post-doctoral fellow and PhD student/fellow levels; ii) joint PhD supervision; iii) mutual involvement on Masters courses; iv) comparative secondary analyses of UK and Australian datasets to derive novel findings and support further grant applications; v) joint research workshops to write funding proposals, led by principal investigators and supported by co-investigators from each institution; vi) combined knowledge exchanges to optimise research impact.

Outcomes: This will i) foster mutual peer and senior support, and intellectual challenge to raise the standard of palliative care research, ii) deliver stronger funding proposals to increase income and research activity, iii) facilitate greater research impact. Research outputs will have increased generalisability and impact because of the focus on improved science, and the international context of outputs.