Conducting retrospective impact analysis to inform a medical research charity's funding strategies: the case of Asthma UK.

Stephen R Hanney,Teresa H Jones,Amanda Watt,Leanne Metcalf

doi:10.1186/1710-1492-9-17

Abstract

BackgroundDebate is intensifying about how to assess the full range of impacts from medical research. Complexity increases when assessing the diverse funding streams of funders such as Asthma UK, a charitable patient organisation supporting medical research to benefit people with asthma. This paper aims to describe the various impacts identified from a range of Asthma UK research, and explore how Asthma UK utilised the characteristics of successful funding approaches to inform future research strategies.MethodsWe adapted the Payback Framework, using it both in a survey and to help structure interviews, documentary analysis, and case studies. We sent surveys to 153 lead researchers of projects, plus 10 past research fellows, and also conducted 14 detailed case studies. These covered nine projects and two fellowships, in addition to the innovative case studies on the professorial chairs (funded since 1988) and the MRC-Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma (the ‘Centre’) which together facilitated a comprehensive analysis of the whole funding portfolio. We organised each case study to capture whatever academic and wider societal impacts (or payback) might have arisen given the diverse timescales, size of funding involved, and extent to which Asthma UK funding contributed to the impacts.ResultsProjects recorded an average of four peer-reviewed journal articles. Together the chairs reported over 500 papers. All streams of funding attracted follow-on funding. Each of the various categories of societal impacts arose from only a minority of individual projects and fellowships. Some of the research portfolio is influencing asthma-related clinical guidelines, and some contributing to product development. The latter includes potentially major breakthroughs in asthma therapies (in immunotherapy, and new inhaled drugs) trialled by university spin-out companies. Such research-informed guidelines and medicines can, in turn, contribute to health improvements. The role of the chairs and the pioneering collaborative Centre is shown as being particularly important.ConclusionsWe systematically demonstrate that all types of Asthma UK’s research funding assessed are making impacts at different levels, but the main societal impacts from projects and fellowships come from a minority of those funded. Asthma UK used the study’s findings, especially in relation to the Centre, to inform research funding strategies to promote the achievement of impact.

Highlights

Debate is intensifying about how to assess the full range of impacts from medical research
There is a possible bias in the results as there is some evidence from Asthma UK’s database of publications, as described in the full report, showing that the average number of publications already known to Asthma UK is slightly higher for the projects on which surveys were returned, than for those that were not
The research fellows who completed the survey recorded an average figure of 11 peer-reviewed articles. This higher average figure reflects the view of some fellows that because their career at that time was being funded by Asthma UK, all, or at least most, of their resulting publications could be counted as having some link with the fellowship

Summary

Introduction

Debate is intensifying about how to assess the full range of impacts from medical research. Complexity increases when assessing the diverse funding streams of funders such as Asthma UK, a charitable patient organisation supporting medical research to benefit people with asthma. Research funders are under growing pressure to demonstrate the returns or impacts that arise from their research funding [1,2,3,4]. For charitable patient organisations that fund medical research it is increasingly important to demonstrate that the money they have invested is leading to improvements in the healthcare and quality of life of the patients they exist to support [5]. Asthma UK has historically provided various types of funding for research, including long-term support for two professorial chairs over the last twenty years, medium-term support through a research fellowship scheme, and project support through an annual grant round. Asthma UK has more recently introduced funding for PhD studentships, initially linked to the Centre

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