A grant of £1 million has been awarded to the University of Lincoln to support a newly established research institute which will address the particular health issues facing rural communities. It is the first award the Foundation has made to the university, and one of the first to support research in the important but neglected area of rural health.
Established last year by the University of Lincoln, the Lincoln International Institute for Rural Health (LIIRH) brings together world-leading specialists, conducting research across a range of rural health-related concerns, ranging from infectious disease epidemiology through to sustainable remote healthcare delivery solutions. The institute will conduct research aimed at improving the lives of rural populations locally, nationally and internationally.
Paul Ramsbottom, Chief Executive of the Wolfson Foundation, said: “There is an important need for high-quality research to address the crucial but largely neglected subject of rural healthcare – in both relatively affluent societies like the UK or in countries with much more limited resources.
We very much welcome the University of Lincoln’s initiative in this area and are delighted to support the new Lincoln International Institute for Rural Health.”
Working in partnership with a network of national and international collaborators and acting as the core research engine of the new Lincoln Medical School, the Institute is launching an ambitious research strategy that will focus on developing and testing appropriate and practical interventions to improve the lives of people living in rural communities.
The Institute focuses its research around three thematic areas: chronic care, chronic disease and disadvantaged populations; prevention, early detection and screening; and health metrics and disease modelling.
During its first year, the Institute has already worked on projects including diabetes prevention and management research in coastal communities and research into the development of effective models of care for disease epidemics in rural South Africa.
Pivotal work by Professor Tanser (Global Professor of Rural Health and Care) over the past 20 years in a rural community decimated by HIV in South Africa has provided substantial insights into the evolving and dynamic nature of the HIV epidemic and its key drivers, directly informing HIV prevention and treatment efforts in sub-Saharan Africa.
Professor Tanser said: “We are absolutely delighted to have been awarded this grant from the Wolfson Foundation in our first year of existence.
It’s a major endorsement of our ambitious research strategy which aims to ‘shine a light’ on the unacceptable health inequities that exist across the rural-urban divide and to find innovative ways of reducing or ideally eliminating that inequality”.
