Welcome to the Forum January 2025 Newsletter

The days are slowly starting to get longer, and the winter holidays have already become a distant memory. The new year has always been an opportunity for transformation and new beginnings, inviting us to reflect on the challenges and achievements of the past to drive us forward with renewed focus energy. Working in R&D roles can be hard… on a daily basis we are navigating ambiguity, tight financial budgets, significant risk and a plethora of other challenges. Working in this sector is also so rewarding when we remember to see the bigger picture, in which we benefit patients and the public every day through better health outcomes and an improved NHS.

I hope that you have found time to reflect on your personal and professional successes in 2024 and are prepared for another year in which we will continue to move the dial on patient outcomes within a changing NHS (informed by the new 10 Year Health Plan in England). Whether you feel excited, overwhelmed or somewhere in between, the R&D Forum is here for you. We are built on collaboration – we connect, support, and represent all working in R&D roles. Perhaps 2025 is the year that you expand your network of brilliant go-to people from across the country by registering to attend our annual conference in Manchester, join a working group, or add yourself to our Hive Mind community. I have personally gained so much from engaging in this community of practice – I am confident that you will too!

Mark Brandon-Grove
R&D Forum Trustee

Programme & Early Bird Discount

We are delighted to announce that the RDF25 Programme has now been released. Keynote speakers and sessions will soon be announced.

Don’t miss out on discounted RDF25 rates.

Join us at RDF25 for an unmissable gathering for professionals dedicated to health and care research management. With the Early Bird discount ending on 31st January, register now for a discounted price.

Annual Trustee and Working Group Chairs Meeting – December 2024

The Trustees and Working Group Chairs of the R&D Forum held their bi-annual face to face meeting in London on the 6th December 2024. The aim of the meeting was to review progress of R&D Forum work in 2024 and look ahead to the plan for the R&D Forum in 2025. It was a valuable opportunity for the chairs to share the current workstreams and priorities of our working groups and understand how the Trustees and community can support and work together to support these in 2025.

RDForum Groups

Upcoming Courses

The R&D Forum courses have been designed to support individual development in health research management, support, and leadership. Browse the calendar for the dates of newly-released training course available in 2025.

Bookings are open for….

Research Governance for PIs and Delivery Teams: 14 March 2025 (Virtual course, one day)
Essentials of NHS Research: 24 March 2025 (Virtual course, two days)
Essentials of Research Sponsorship: 27 March 2025 (Virtual course, one day)
Local Capacity and Capability for Research: 31 March 2025 (in-person course, Birmingham, one day)
Regulatory Inspection Ready : 4 April 2025 (in-person course, Leeds, one day)
Getting the most out of IRAS: 7 April 2025 (Virtual course, half-day)

Browse Training Courses

NIHR Updates

NIHR to increase commitment to Public Partnerships and Research Impact with new Coordinating Centre contract

HRA Update: Blog: A review of 2024 and a look ahead to 2025

HRA Chief Executive, Matt Westmore, has written a blog reflecting on how the Health Research Authority has supported research in the UK throughout 2024. In the blog Matt also looks ahead to the HRA’s new strategy and what their priorities will be in 2025.

Read more here

HRA Update: Get involved in the work of the HRA – Help shape their new strategy

The HRA are looking for four members of the public to help shape the development of their new strategy.

Their current strategy, ‘making it easy to do research that people can trust’, was written to last three years. The HRA are now planning a new strategy, starting in 2025.

Read more here

School for Social Care Research secures fourth phase of funding

Adult social care research in England will receive up to £31 million in funding over 5 years to support the next phase of the NIHR School for Social Care Research (SSCR).

The NIHR SSCR supports internationally leading adult social care research and capacity building for researchers working to improve social care practice. This next round of funding will further support the School’s core vision to provide better evidence for what works in adult social care and how this can be applied across the whole country. This will support, mobilise and deliver impact for the benefit of the public as service users, carers and the workforce.

Read more here

Upcoming changes to NIHR Academy research career development opportunities

We’d like to let you know about upcoming changes to research career development opportunities at the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

What’s changing?

Since 2018, the NIHR Academy has been working to break down barriers to career progression in research. But our portfolio of opportunities has grown over the years and become complex. To ensure our career development opportunities are accessible and easy to understand, we are simplifying our fellowship offering to a single award at predoctoral, doctoral and postdoctoral levels.

By simplifying our awards, but keeping our background-specific funding committees, we will improve the experience for applicants but maintain the level of funding and background-specific support that is currently available.

All our other research career development opportunities will continue as they currently are.

Timelines

The first simplified award to launch will be the Predoctoral Award in January 2025. Doctoral and Postdoctoral awards will run twice a year.

Predoctoral Award application window: 29 January – 20 March 2025
Postdoctoral Award application window: 26 March – 21 May 2025
Doctoral Award application window: 9 April – 10 June 2025

Read more here

Research Adjacent Podcast – Helen Riding

Helen Riding, R&D Forum Coordinator and Primary Care Research Manager for NECS, recently took part in the latest Research Adjacent podcast, which shines a light on the people and professions that go into making research successful.

Helen talks about how she spent the first 10 years of her career working in graphic design and journalism – first for local newspapers in Newcastle upon Tyne, then for BBC News in London. It was only redundancy that led her back to studying as she retrained to be a midwife and then she moved into research as a Research Facilitator. Helen also talks about her passion for research and making sure that everyone has the opportunity to take part in research.

Read more here

Exploring Opportunities and Challenges to Supporting Trialists’ Behaviours for Greener Trials

This research study sponsored by the University of Aberdeen is interested in exploring factors that influence trialists’ behaviours and attitudes in relation to the design, delivery, reporting and analysis of greener trials. When we refer to ‘greener trials’ we mean clinical trials that are designed and delivered without unnecessary and unjustified carbon emissions.

The survey will take about 15 to 20 minutes to complete. All data collected in the survey will be confidentially and securely stored on computer servers maintained by the University of Aberdeen.

Thematic Summary of Responses to the Survey on RDN Transformation

Many thanks to those of you who responded to the survey on Research Delivery Network transformation. We received 40 responses and it was clear that many more of your staff were also involved in compiling the responses behind the scenes. As with all our work with the RDN, we have worked closely together with colleagues at UKRD and UHA R&D Directors on this survey.

We committed to submitting all your responses to the RDN leadership team. That has now been done. We have also carried out a thematic analysis of the responses received.

Read more here