Imperial Health Charity announces 2017 research fellowships
Imperial Health Charity announces 2017 research fellowships
05 May 2017
Imperial Health Charity has approved nine research fellowships of up to £50,000 for applicants to undertake pioneering research and invest in the training and development of Trust staff.
The program allows medical and non-medical staff to undertake 12 months of out-of-programme research to develop their research skills for the benefit of patients at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. A total of £436,905 was allocated to a range of grants, including research into improving dialysis access for older patients and developing a urine test to diagnose oesophageal and gastric cancers.
Gemma Clunie, a Clinical Specialist Speech & Language Therapist at Charing Cross Hospital, received a grant to study the voice and swallowing difficulties of people with airway stenosis, a rare condition causing narrowing of the airway. “I am just thrilled,” she said. “It was really unexpected. I was hopeful but you never know whether these things are going to come to fruition. It’s going to give me the opportunity to push my career down the path that I would like it to go.”
Aside from the potentially life threatening complications from the condition, airway stenosis significantly impacts quality of life. “If you’ve got a voice problem it can mean that you can’t work or you can’t do your job. Similarly if you’ve got a swallowing problem you’re probably not going to want to go out to a restaurant to eat and drink with friends. It starts to have much more of a social impact.”
“Imperial is the European centre for airway stenosis management. It’s got the biggest number of patients being treated with this condition and the surgeon who leads on it, Dr Guri Sandhu, is renowned as an international expert in the surgical techniques.”
“Our longer term aim is to try and make sure that we can disseminate some of what we do here to other places so that the care gets better all over the country, not just here in London. People are travelling a long way to come for treatment here. Longer term, we’re thinking about things like using Skype for therapy and whether that’d be appropriate to allow people to access our service without having to travel.”
Since 2009, together with our funding partner, the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, the charity has made a total of 55 Fellowships totalling £2.5million.
The research fellowships are open to anyone employed by the NHS who plans to undertake their proposed research project for the benefit of patients at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust or the surrounding communities.
Applications for next year’s research fellowships open later in the year. For additional information or guidance please contact our grants team at grants@imperialcharity.org.uk.
