About us

ARCs and the NIHR

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is the nation's largest funder of health and care research and provides the people, facilities and technology that enables research to thrive. Learn more about the NIHR here: Overview of National Institute for Health and Care Research Infrastructure

NIHR Applied Research Collaborations (ARCs) support applied health and care research that responds to, and meets, the needs of local populations and local health and care systems.

The NIHR ARC Yorkshire and Humber is one of 15 ARCs across England, part of a £135 million investment by the NIHR to improve the health and care of patients and the public.

About us

Each NIHR ARC is made up of local providers of NHS services, local providers of care services, NHS commissioners, local authorities, universities, private companies and charities. These collaborations work together to conduct high quality, generalisable, applied health and care research that addresses the specific health or care issues in their region.

NIHR ARCs also act to close the second translational gap and increase the rate at which research findings are implemented into practice.

The 15 ARCs work collaboratively to address national research priorities, with individual ARCs providing national leadership in their areas of expertise. Find out more about ARCs

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About the NIHR

NIHR's mission is to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research. The NIHR was established in 2006 and is primarily funded by the Department of Health and Social Care.

Working in partnership with the NHS, universities, local government, other research funders, patients and the public, the NIHR delivers and enables world-class research that transforms people’s lives, promotes economic growth and advances science.

People-powered research in Yorkshire and Humber

The NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Yorkshire and Humber is an important programme of applied research, hosted within Bradford Institute for Health Research, and delivered through a partnership of organisations, including NHS organisations, Local Authorities, universities, third sector organisations and industry.

Our ARC supports people-powered research that aims to tackle inequalities and improve health and well-being for our communities. Our themes of healthy childhood, mental health and multimorbidity, older people and urgent care are the priorities that have been identified by our NHS partners and the public and will ensure our region will benefit from cutting-edge innovation. The ARC will ensure our NHS and social services are able to improve effectiveness and impact to benefit our patients and their families.

Our vision and principles

We will:

    • catalyse world leading applied health and social care research, to advance knowledge and support change relevant to local needs

    • encourage high quality regional research collaborations and between ARCs nationally

    • engage with policy makers, professionals, health and social care commissioners to develop the research agenda and translate research findings to improve services and health outcomes, and reduce health inequalities

    • co-produce the development and translation of research with practitioners and public

    • develop innovative methods for applied health research for evaluation, addressing equity impact of innovation and value for money

    • build researcher capacity in service delivery and university sectors.

10 key characteristics of our work:

  • Interdisciplinary: we promote cross discipline, profession/sector working to extract value across professions disciplines and services, and developing pan-Yorkshire and Humber strengths.

  • Strong public, patient and other service user engagement: we engage effectively with the public and service users to promote genuine community and patient co-production of research and delivery of impact.

  • A policy and practice focus: we involve staff providing services to address relevant questions, promote findings and realise impact. This will be supported by the Yorkshire and Humber Improvement Academy.

  • A system wide approach: we engage with health and social policy organisations which reflect service users’ journeys through age, place and organisation, and which influence levels and distribution of health and wellbeing.

  • A focus on reducing inequalities: we are supported by experts in the cross-cutting Health Economics, Evaluation and Equality theme to consider how our research can reduce health inequalities.

  • Exploit the power of population cohorts: we use our world-leading cohorts, involving more than 100,000 active participants, to develop and test interventions.

  • Harnessing the potential of routine data linkage: we develop learning health and care systems using routine data collection and linkage across primary, secondary and community care, education and social services.

  • Capacity building emphasis: we aim to inspire and train the next generation of researchers, harnessing local creativity and involving staff to develop and test new approaches.

  • Distributed and flexible: our approach is non-bureaucratic, channelling resource into research, implementation and capacity development.

  • Good governance: we have strong internal strategic and operational management at core and theme levels. A Partnership Strategy Board, representing stakeholders and an International Advisory Board assures the relevance and quality of our research.