NIHR GLOBAL HEALTH RESEARCH UNIT ON RESPIRATORY HEALTH (RESPIRE) The NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Respiratory Health (RESPIRE) aims to reduce the impact and number of deaths caused by respiratory diseases in some of the world’s most deprived populations.

RESPIRE spans across Asia with organisations in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and Pakistan working in partnership with the University of Edinburgh. Together, we seek to tackle some of the biggest causes of illness and death in the region – respiratory diseases. Across Asia, an estimated 1 in 5 deaths are due to respiratory conditions. Despite this, awareness of the devastating impact of respiratory diseases is low and these conditions do not get the priority attention they need from health systems, policymakers and funding agencies nationally, regionally in Asia or globally.

The term respiratory disease covers a range of conditions which affect the lungs and breathing. They can be acute conditions (short term, typically starting suddenly) or chronic conditions (long term). Both have significant implications for the health and economy of countries across the globe. RESPIRE addresses both acute and chronic respiratory diseases across two key Research Programmes, which are supported by three underpinning platforms focussing on stakeholder engagement and governance; training and capacity development; and methodology and data science.

Programme 1 addresses the ongoing challenges of acute infections which can spread from person to person, such as pneumonia, and can cause severe illness and death. In RESPIRE countries more than 1 in 3 child deaths are due to pneumonia, most of which are avoidable with existing interventions.

Programme 2 addresses long-term non-communicable diseases (NCDs), with research on asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and lung cancer. These conditions are increasingly important in LMICs, but awareness of the scale of the problem remains low among health workers and policymakers.

RESPIRE responded to the coronavirus pandemic by rapidly incorporating a number of COVID-19 research projects across both Programmes.

RESPIRE has created strong collaborative partnerships in Asia, enabling research to be led by local teams to answer the most important research questions for their country and local health services. Local researchers lead the projects and work within their communities to decide what is most needed to improve respiratory conditions in their areas and reduce health inequity. Our focus, where possible, is on the problems of the poorest groups in our network of countries. Together with our Partners we have developed strong Community Engagement and Involvement strategies to improve the relevance and impact of our research. Partners are supported to engage patients and communities in RESPIRE studies from an early stage, and to make community engagement part of all of their projects.

Our approach is to work with existing local research groups enabling better provision of resources and allowing our Partners to build capacity, which will continue to benefit our network’s countries and communities in the future. 

We are developing robust plans to sustain this research, and to maximise the local, regional and global impact from the new knowledge and experience generated by RESPIRE.