Leicestershire Healthcare Inequalities Improvement PhD Programme - LHIIP (360G-Wellcome-223512_Z_21_Z)

Leicestershire’s social and demographic features, including the highest proportion of non-white residents (55%) in the UK, provide a unique and important opportunity to address key health issues across an ethnically and culturally diverse population, recently amplified by the pandemic. We will capitalise on our strong track record of supporting clinical academics, with a focus on nurses, midwifes and allied health professionals, to grow the multidisciplinary research base in the inclusive management of long term conditions across healthcare systems and academic partners. Projects will focus on research-practice gaps in our areas of our research expertise to holistically improve patient care. Integration of basic scientists, social scientists, clinical academics, clinicians and data scientists to develop collaborative and strategic research programmes, combined with an outstanding training environment will provide an intellectually stimulating, methodologically rigorous and supportive environment for PhD fellows. We will establish a sustainable integrated framework for healthcare professional academic career pathways to build capacity in clinical research leadership and create an inclusive research culture. Formal evaluation will ensure sustainability and best practice sharing. The long term goal is to increase the visibility and breadth of healthcare professional researchers and to transform holistic patient clinical care addressing health inequalities.