Public Health Grassroots Awards

Are you looking to develop your research skills?  

We have a number of schemes to provide direct resources to local authorities to increase their research capacity and capability. One of the schemes is our Public Health Grassroots Awards.  

The first Public Health Grassroots Award funding call closed in June, we will share details of the next call towards the end of 2025. 

Public Health Grassroots Awards are personal, short-term (typically 3–6 months) awards for colleagues in local authorities, non-NHS providers, or voluntary community and social enterprises (VCSEs) delivering services on behalf of a local authority. Funding allows time to be involved in public health research and could involve a placement with an existing research team, lending support to a research project or undertaking training to develop research skills. 

Awards are flexible and can be tailored to individual needs. Applicants do not need to have any previous research experience, and for some will be the first step in their research journey. 

We held our first open funding call in April and made 19 awards:

• 9 to local authorities

• 10 to VCSE organisations

Public Health Grassroots pilot awards

We awarded 3 pilots in January 2025:  

• Pilot 1 – A colleagues from London Borough of Hackney Council's Public Health Team, spent 3 months supporting an NIHR programme of research led by University College London and undertook 3 qualitative research training sessions

• Pilot 2 – Sophie Beckett from Birmingham Museums Trust (part of Birmingham City Council's Public Health Team) at the early stages of her research journey, completed a Master of Public Health module and research training  to support the creation of a toolkit for museums on how to use Implementation Science in creative health activities

• Pilot t3 – A voluntary community social enterprise (VCSE) colleague from Nuvo Wellbeing, completed an academic placement at Newcastle University to assist the analysis of quantitative data, and public involvement training to develop research skills and gain practical experience in managing and analysing complex data sets