Apply for a project grant

The aim of the charity is to prevent and treat disease and disability by funding vital medical research in hospitals or research institutions across the UK.

The remit focuses on child health to include problems affecting pregnancy, childbirth, babies, children and young people. There are projects described on our website from our previous wider remit that have recently finished or have one year to run but all new applications must focus on child health.

Within child health, we support a broad spectrum of research with the objective of:

  • preventing disease and disability and
  • alleviating physical disability

Please note that our emphasis is on biomedical clinical research or research at the interface between clinical and basic science. We pride ourselves that our research is both innovative and of a high standard as judged by rigorous peer review.

Within the above criteria, we also support research and development of equipment and techniques to improve diagnosis, therapy and assistive technology (including orthoses, prostheses and aids to daily living) and we encourage applications in the field of medical engineering.

Exclusions

Please note that we do not provide:

  • grants towards service provision or audit studies
  • grants purely for higher education, we do not pay course fees for degrees or subsistence costs
  • grants for medical or dental electives
  • grants for work undertaken outside the UK
  • any indirect costs such as administrative or other overheads imposed by the University or other Institution
  • costs associated with advertising and recruitment of staff
  • 'top up' funding for work supported by other funding bodies
  • costs to attend conferences (current Action Medical Research grantholders may apply separately as the need arises during the grant)
  • general appeals from other charities. Applications would normally come directly from research teams and projects need to be passed through our scientific peer review system
  • grants for research into complementary / alternative medicine
  • grants on how best to train clinical staff
  • grants for psychosocial aspects of treatment
  • grants on social research, family relationships or socioeconomic research
  • grants for very basic research with little likelihood of clinical impact within the short to medium term
  • Applicants based in core funded units can apply but need to demonstrate added value.