Research Capability Funding (RCF)
Research-active NHS bodies or NHS health care providers are eligible to receive Research Capability Funding (RCF) from the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) as a result of either a) hosting NIHR research grants or b) recruiting participants to non-commercial studies on the NIHR portfolio. Organisations receiving RCF have the freedom to decide how to spend this funding in line with the rules of RCF and their local research strategy.
NHS Norfolk & Waveney ICB is awarded RCF based on the active NIHR grants that we hold.
We currently use our RCF allocation in five ways to support research capacity and capability building:
Our research development team; a proportion of our funding supports our internal research development team
Project grants to support academics to write high quality research applications to the NIHR
Early Career Fellowship scheme in collaboration with the University of East Anglia
Help Primary Care Networks to develop research capacity and capability
Enhance capacity and capability across the Norfolk and Waveney system.
We have published a set of principles by which we use our RCF allocation. These can be found here.
Project grants
To support researchers to produce high-quality National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) funding applications, we offer some of our Research Capability Funding (RCF) to researchers to develop their research.
RCF projects typically fall into one of the following two categories:
Exploratory work to help develop a research question (typically with significant stakeholder work and up to six months)
Funding to support the writing of a NIHR grant application (where previous RCF has not been awarded; usually less than three months funding requested).
Each RCF project awardee is expected to produce an NIHR grant submission and a short evidence briefing (see below).
Please see the guidance and application form for the latest funding call. If you would like to discuss a potential RCF project, please contact the research development team.
Early Career Fellowships
These early career fellowships are co-funded through RCF and the University of East Anglia (UEA).
The primary goal of the fellowship is for the fellow to write a National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) grant application to secure future funding. The fellowship will give the successful candidates the time and support to conduct work that leads to an NIHR application. For example:
Enhance their CV by publishing further papers from their PhD
Conduct a review to strengthen their research proposal
Collect some preliminary data to inform the design of the grant application
Build a network of collaborators and/or PPIE contributors
Our early career fellowships are advertised via UEA.
Outputs from previous RCF projects
2023-24, round 1
2324_1 Primary care healthcare professionals supporting patients to discontinue antidepressants.pdf2324_1 The clinical effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy after stroke.pdf2324_1 The Support Needs Approach for Patients.pdf2324_2 What matters to me project FINAL_Accessible.pdf2023-24, round 2
2324_2 Evaluation of a short-term autism support service and measuring its impact on autistic adults’ wellbeing.pdf2324_2 Embedding an integrated system approach to the development and implementation of a Prehabilitation programme for cancer patients.pdf