NIHRDataInsights/HRCSData huggingface dataset:
Title: From genetic sequence to phenotypic consequence: Genetic and environmental links between cognitive ability, socioeconomic position, and health
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: Cognitive ability is phenotypically and genetically associated with health, mental health, and socioeconomic position (SEP). This research programme will examine this relationship to identify specific loci and biological mechanisms underlying this relationship, including those found on the, as yet, unexamined mitochondrial genome, to quantify the genetic and environmental contributions to the relationship between cognitive ability, health, and SEP, and identify instances where these relationships are likely to be causal. This research programme begins with a multivariate analysis of cognitive ability and genetically linked traits using genomic structural equation modelling in order to maximise statistical power and loci discovery. The loci identified will next be used to predict phenotypic variance in health, and cognitive ability in a family based cohort. Here, I will derive genetic predictors based on the alleles a parent has, but the offspring do not. This design will enable me to quantify the variation in cognitive ability, SEP, and health, that is attributable to the parental level of cognitive ability. Crucially the effect of these genetic predictors can be used to measure effects that are independent from any direct genetic effect between parent and offspring. Genetic instruments will next be created using the summary data from the multivariate analysis of cognitive ability. These will be used in Mendelian randomisation studies to examine the causal role that differences in cognitive ability play in health, SEP, and brain imaging traits. Finally, I will be the first to examine the role that genetic variation in the mitochondria is associated with differences in cognitive ability. This series of analysis will also include health, SEP, and brain imaging traits that are phenotypically associated with differences in cognitive ability, in order to examine if pleiotropic variants on the mitochondrial genome, contribute towards these phenotypic links.


Research activity codes: 1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES;1.3 CHEMICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES;2.1 BIOLOGICAL AND ENDOGENOUS FACTORS;2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;MENTAL HEALTH
Title: Ageing Research Translation (ART) of Healthy Ageing Network
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: The UK government has set the ambitious target of ensuring that people can enjoy at least five additional healthy, independent years of life by 2035 and that the gap between the experience of the richest and poorest is reduced. A recent House of Lords Science and Technology Committee report on healthy ageing makes it clear that these targets will not be met with current approaches to research, policy and service delivery. The scientific challenge is to identify novel approaches to research on ageing across the life course with clear pathways to translation. The ART of Healthy Ageing Network will meet this challenge by catalysing ever-closer working relationships across three key areas of research activity: a) large population-based and routine data cohorts, b) deep-phenotyped life course ageing cohorts with human tissue samples, and c) centres of excellence in the biology of ageing. The Network will bring together a broad range of academic disciplines and stakeholders representing the public, policy and industry. It will build the capacity, knowledge and resources needed to drive forward discovery science in human biological ageing, and a Translational Platform for Healthy Ageing across the Life Course to test interventions to improve healthspan. The activities of the ART of Healthy Ageing Network will deliver a growing interdisciplinary network of researchers, a thriving community of early career researchers with interdisciplinary training, a broad and engaged stakeholder community, a clear road map for growing the Network and developing UK infrastructure, and initial proof-of-concept for our Translational Platform for Healthy Ageing across the Life Course. It will generate new collaborations with the critical mass to develop credible bids for future funding calls. These synergies will deliver additional funding and hence capacity to accelerate translational Ageing research in the UK and internationally with the ultimate goal of improving healthspan for all.


Research activity codes: 4.5 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (DETECTION);6.9 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (TREATMENT EVALUATION)
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;MENTAL HEALTH
Title: An interdisciplinary ageing alliance: cellular metabolism over a life-course in socioeconomic disadvantaged populations
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: Life expectancy is increasing but the period spent in good health is not keeping pace. Furthermore, the inequalities in healthy life expectancy are greater when the level of socioeconomic deprivation is taken into account. People living in the most deprived areas can expect to live their last 18 years in ill health compared to 9 years for those in affluent regions. Therefore, the aim of this network is to address the biological cause for this healthy ageing inequality by forming an alliance with other areas in England that also have similar levels of socioeconomic deprivation (yet differing in ethnicity) including Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle and Leicester. A key biological factor underpinning the inequality in healthy ageing seen in socioeconomic disadvantaged populations are changes in cellular metabolism. This is the biochemical processes that generate or use up "energy" that take place within each cell of a living organism. Our hypothesis is that cellular metabolic dysfunction of the ageing cell is dictated by both intrinsic (genetic and pathway-driven) and extrinsic (environmental and epigenetic) mechanisms from an early age. Hence the purpose of this interdisciplinary network is to elucidate such mechanisms and the interaction between such factors. Bringing together a truly interdisciplinary network made up of biologists, geneticists, clinicians, nutritionists, sports scientists, epidemiologists, geographers, AI and bioinformatic experts, economists, policy makers, urban planners and architects; who together with key stakeholders overseen by an expert advisory panel will the tackle and redress health inequalities to benefit our most disadvantaged communities though an understanding of the deregulation of cell metabolism.


Research activity codes: 1.1 NORMAL BIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT AND FUNCTIONING;1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES;2.1 BIOLOGICAL AND ENDOGENOUS FACTORS;2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;MENTAL HEALTH
Title: A point-of-care solution for detecting SCRAs
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: Our proposal seeks to deliver a healthcare technology that will benefit the most vulnerable in society. Synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists (SCRAs, more commonly called Spice) are endemic in UK homeless communities and the prison population. These drugs fall under recent Novel Psychoactive Substance legislation. The challenge with these drugs is that there is no generic point-of-care detection, meaning treatment and harm reduction strategies are essentially impossible. The use of these drugs leads not only to significant adverse health outcomes for users but also major social problems owing the drugs common side effects which can include psychosis and aggression. Our proposal builds on our recent advances in fluorescence spectral fingerprinting of SCRAs to identify these drugs both in street material and in saliva of users. The proposal covers the full range of activities necessary to deliver the technology to beta testing, including portable device design, analytical software development, chemical fingerprint libraries and the associated community pharmacy practice advice to deploy the technology effectively. At the end of the award we aim to start a not-for-profit social enterprise to bring the technology to the mainstream. The proposal includes partners from the full range of stakeholders relevant to SCRA use including homeless charities, police forces and prisons and drug testing services. Our proposal leverages the contributions of these partners with a carefully selected interdisciplinary research team (analytical/synthetic chemistry, optics engineering, artificial intelligence, community pharmacy and addiction psychology) that can support and deliver each aspect of the proposal. We believe the scope and potential of our proposal is truly unique and presents the best chance for tackling SCRA use in the UK and more widely.


Research activity codes: 5.1 PHARMACEUTICALS
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;MENTAL HEALTH
Title: Creating Research Ecologies to Advance Transdiciplinary lEarning (CREATE) on arts-based programs through the study of adolescent loneliness
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: CREATE's goal is to improve transdisciplinary mental health research (MHR) across the arts and science by drawing on the strengths of each to inform the other, and by bringing these into dialogue with young people (YP). Arts-based approaches have well evidenced outcomes for youth MH. However, we lack shared vocabularies and methods, that 'make sense' across disciplines and youth, to interrogate their active processes (mechanisms of change) and to analyse the meaning in artistic outputs. Learning from these important and widely used approaches is therefore being constrained. Our objectives are to capitalise on the unique knowledges of art, science and YP to develop methods to unlock the learning potential from arts-based processes. Our interdisciplinary and youth consortium is uniquely positioned to produce an innovative transdisciplinary paradigm. We address four unmet needs in adolescent MHR:1. resources to help this ecology better understand each other's vocabularies, values, perspectives and methods; 2. robust transdisciplinary methods for analysing artistic outputs of youth arts-based MHR; 3. characterisation and conceptualisation of key active processes in youth arts-based practices to increase transdisciplinary understanding of how these 'work' for MH; and, 4. integration of arts perspectives to overcome existing barriers to the use of standardised MH measures in arts approaches with YP. We use Living Labs to optimise learning from arts, science and YP and to co-produce and test novel methods and resources addressing each unmet need. Labs build on initial wide scoping reviews of barriers and potential solutions to optimising learning across art, science and youth voice. We anchor the project to adolescent loneliness with learning transferable to other MH domains. Outputs will be made available through a new resource hub to support youth-science-art collaborations and widely disseminated through the National Centre for Research Methods and other platforms.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS;3.1 PRIMARY PREVENTION INTERVENTIONS TO MODIFY BEHAVIOURS OR PROMOTE WELL-BEING;7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;MENTAL HEALTH
Title: Violence, Health and Society: VISION
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: The vision underlying the Consortium on 'Violence, Health and Society' is that improving the knowledge base on violence and using this knowledge to inform changes to policy and practice will improve population health and reduce health inequalities. It will do so by acting on 'upstream' harms to health caused by violence. Research on such interventions is developing but is held back by weak theory and weak data. Theory is weak because it is often focused on individuals rather than on the system level. We will develop systems analysis using complexity theory that allows consideration of feedback loops that generate wicked problems and perverse outcomes. We will embed questions about the significance of multiple intersecting inequalities including gender and ethnicity into the theory underpinning the systems framework. Data is weak because, collected by multiple agencies for their own purposes, it is fragmented and incommensurable. We will work with data providers to develop survey and administrative data in health, justice and specialised services and translate it into our shared measurement framework. We will curate existing datasets rather than collect new data. We will use natural language processing to turn free-text narratives into quantitative data. We will integrate data using probabilistic individual profiles, which offers a powerful new route to data linkage that avoids the dangers of identifying real people. We will interrogate our newly improved data with questions about the nature of the causal pathways connecting violence, health and society to identify promising sites of intervention. We will develop cost-benefit analysis and evaluate interventions, using findings to build the theory of change. With our partners in health, justice, specialised services and government, we will seek to embed the new measurement in practice, to enable evidence-based feedback on developments to reduce violence and thereby improve health and reduce health inequalities.


Research activity codes: 2.4 SURVEILLANCE AND DISTRIBUTION;2.5 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGIES (AETIOLOGY);3.5 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (PREVENTION);8.5 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (HEALTH SERVICES)
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;MENTAL HEALTH
Title: The shaping of mental health and the mechanisms leading to (un)successful transitions for care-experienced young people
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: Care-experienced young people (CEYP) have often experienced maltreatment and there is robust evidence of high rates of mental health difficulties in this group. The failure to adequately address the mental health of CEYP is considered a key driver of a range of poor outcomes across the lifespan, including the high rates of school exclusion, unemployment and homelessness. Despite knowledge of the scale of the problem there remains a dearth of the high-quality empirical evidence necessary to address it, particularly via identifying mechanisms that may drive risk or resilient outcomes. Our mixed method cross-discipline research programme addresses this, via a series of linked ambitious research studies that will provide the most robust evidence to-date on key drivers of the mental health and broader wellbeing of CEYP. Our programme focuses on disentangling the role of pre-care experiences, social-care and education experiences, and individual psychological and social processes (e.g., threat biases, perceived support). This is not just in relation to the transdiagnostic mental health of CEYP, but also their wellbeing at two key times: the transition i) from primary into secondary school and ii) from adolescence into early adulthood. These are two crucial points of vulnerability for CEYP, where deteriorations in mental health and relationship breakdowns are common. To disentangle drivers of outcomes at these complex periods of time our programme includes i) a large administrative data linkage study combining data on education, mental health, and social care in England and Wales, ii) two theory-driven longitudinal quantitative studies targeting our two transitions, and iii) two longitudinal qualitative studies focused on these same periods that allow for particularly in-depth understanding of the experiences of CEYP. Output from the programme provides the essential high-quality evidence for informing cross-sector evidence-informed prevention and intervention programme(s).


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS;7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS;8.1 ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;MENTAL HEALTH
Title: DATAMIND: Data Hub for Mental health INformatics research Development
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: Despite the significant health, social and economic burden caused by mental health disorders, research to address them is currently constrained by a number of issues. People who have mental health disorders are socially excluded, less likely to participate in research studies and, if they do, remain in follow-up. Consequently, those with these disorders are inadequately served by consented research studies which under-represent those at greatest need. Moreover, in spite of the huge potential of data-centric health research and the UK's internationally leading status in terms of mental data resources (such as longitudinal and cohort studies, and data platforms), such resources are not yet well coordinated, and mental data research is not well integrated with physical health specialities (despite well-recognised interactions). Our new Mental Health Data Research Hub will maximise the value of the UK's rich mental health data assets and enable coordinated research, with the ultimate aim of improving lives. The Hub will transform MH research in the UK by providing a central, integrated data infrastructure - with Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable - FAIR mental health rich datasets from diverse sources; underpinned by expertise, innovation, responsible-use principles and embedded public participation; for use across Academia, the NHS, Third Sector, Policy Makers and Industry. The Hub infrastructure will be co-located at 4 lead sites in UK covering the four nations. A core activity is indexing and curating data for research, development and innovation across stakeholders. The Hub will continuously, from its onset, catalogue relevant UK mental health rich datasets, including genomics, routine care, cohorts and trials, often through the Catalogue of Mental Health Measures as well as novel data from schools and charities and make them discoverable and therefore useable through the HDRUK Gateway.


Research activity codes: 7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;MENTAL HEALTH
Title: Digital Health: Innovative engineering technologies to improve the understanding and management of fatigue
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: Fatigue is considered as a "final common pathway": a vague clinical symptom that can result from many different diseases and mechanisms. Our limited understanding of fatigue stems, in part, from its subjective and fluctuating nature and its complex interplay of parameters associated with "tiredness" such as sleep, exercise, and mood. This project will investigate sensory technologies to objectively, accurately and unobtrusively measure fatiguability, as an indicator of fatigue. These measurements will be correlated to sensed data (activity levels, sleep, heart rate, and others) and individuals' self-reports. Granular details will be obtained about patterns in the human fatigue experience. The results will reveal whether there could be distinct, clinically relevant fatigue phenotypes. We will also use longitudinal research (studying participants closely over a several week period). To date, longitudinal fatigue research been limited by statistical analysis methods (such as multilevel modelling) which are unable to detect subtle or complex relationships between fatigue and related life-style factors over time. We will use artificial intelligence algorithms to help analyse and classify these correlations within the sensed data, self-reports and qualitative data.


Research activity codes: 2.1 BIOLOGICAL AND ENDOGENOUS FACTORS;4.1 DISCOVERY AND PRECLINICAL TESTING OF MARKERS AND TECHNOLOGIES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;MENTAL HEALTH
Title: The time of their lives? Developing Concepts and Methods to Understand Loneliness in Students
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: To develop a theoretical framework for loneliness in students and the methodological approaches necessary to study loneliness in young people sensitively, the project will investigate divergent origins of loneliness using several methodological approaches. (1) Egocentric social network data, relating to current and previous social networks, will be collected, and analysed to assess how changes in social network through the transition to university impact loneliness. (2) Co-creation activities with students will be used to help identify proxy social network measures that may provide indicators of important facets of social networks, for use in future research. (3) We will develop a new methodological tool to assess student expectation for social connection, allowing the gap between expectation and experience to be captured. We will use co-creation approaches, with focus groups followed by exploratory factor analysis to refine a new scale. (4) We will employ historical research, reviewing archive resources from three universities, the NUS, student newspapers and publications from the Student Health Officers' Association, to understand how the idea of university as a social experience evolved. (5) We will use in-depth qualitative work, employing focus groups, triangulated with student reviews of themes and co-creation in thematic analysis, to investigate how social identity influences belonging and loneliness. (6) We will run a large-scale longitudinal survey and use Linear Mixed models, a powerful regression-based technique, allowing us to account for non-independence arising from the longitudinal design and hierarchical data, to test the relative roles of expectation and experience of social connection, change in social networks and sense of belonging, in predicting loneliness for students. (7) We will use co-creation approaches across the project and capture insights and lessons from this engagement.


Research activity codes: 1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES;2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;MENTAL HEALTH