Joint Aspire Awards granted across the College of Medicine and Health

The College of Medicine and Health has recently celebrated multiple joint Aspire (Access to Success Pathways for Inclusive Research) Awards encouraging researchers to collaborate on trialling approaches to advancing race inclusivity in research. The Awards provide researchers within the University with funding to collaborate with external organisations and to learn from their practices surrounding inclusivity.

Mrs Parbir Jagpal from the School of Pharmacy and Professor M Thirumala Krishna from the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy were awarded a joint grant to explore patterns of drug allergy and adverse drug reactions in ethnic minority groups. By reviewing primary care data, their focus will be to address an area of unmet need regarding medicine safety for patients from ethnic minority groups, with a longer-term view of developing culturally-tailored and -targeted interventions for these groups.

In a second award for Pharmacy, Dr Zahraa Jalal (School of Pharmacy) and Dr Ping Guo (School of Nursing and Midwifery) are directing their Award funding towards a project risk-assessing primary care and experiences for women from Black and Ethnic Minority backgrounds following gestational diabetes diagnoses. Through a retrospective service evaluation of data, their study will evaluate whether women from these backgrounds receive proper follow-up care and how better to support them given existing healthcare inequalities.

The ASPIRE Awards are funded by the Wellcome Trust’s Institutional Funding for Research Culture (2023).