Enhanced Centre Public Engagement (360G-Wellcome-203148_Z_16_A)

The Wellcome/EPSRC Centre for Medical Engineering has 3 clinical challenges: cancer, cardiovascular and neurological and psychiatric conditions. We seek to work with local partners and national charities relevant to our clinical challenges, to not just disseminate but also to engage with them to help support them and integrate into their policies. Since 2017, the Public Engagement programme has focused mainly on heart research. We have ongoing association with a local heart charity (ECHO) that we expect to lead to even stronger relationships working on newly identified, mutually beneficial priorities. Extra funding will allow us to further strengthen our partnership with ECHO and enable us to work more alongside patient groups with cancer and neurological and psychiatric conditions. This new proposal will allow us to deliver a series of discreet projects as well as providing small seed funds for our researchers to lead on their own ideas. We hope to secure a secondment or local individual with experience of, and from, the local community to work with us. We are approaching Wellcome for this funding, as no applicable grants are available from other funders.