The Nuffield Foundation has awarded £1.5 million in research funding to The University of Manchester as part of a £4 million award to six research teams across five UK Universities to improve the lives of people living with musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions by influencing policy and practice.
Musculoskeletal conditions – including arthritis and back pain – affect 18.8 million people in the UK and are the leading contributor to disability in the UK. One in five people in England consult a GP about a musculoskeletal condition every year, which accounted for the third largest area of NHS England programme spending at £4.7 billion in 2013-14.
Despite the huge number of people living with MSK conditions in the UK, there is a lack of evidence on how these conditions progress and their effect on people’s well-being and life chances. Together, the new, interdisciplinary research projects will address this by exploring the impacts of MSK conditions on different aspects of well-being. The research projects will create new datasets as well as exploiting existing data in new and innovative ways.
The research grants are the first to be awarded from the Nuffield Foundation’s dedicated £12.5 million fund for research into MSK conditions. The next call for applications will be launched later in 2020.
