This week, the NIHR (UK based) announced a PhD Fellowship opportunity. A Fellowship is designed to support a researcher to gain experience and training in doing research, and to support the research itself. It’s a great opportunity. Advertisement pasted below.
If you are reading this after any of these calls have closed, the same organisations may have a more recent call.
NIHR-Wellbeing of Women Doctoral Fellowships (Round 6)
Provide the opportunity to undertake exciting and impactful research that will underpin a researcher’s development as an independent future leader. The Doctoral Fellowship funds researchers to undertake a PhD
Wellbeing of Women is delighted to have partnered with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to jointly fund one Charity Partnership Doctoral Fellowship.
All NIHR Fellowships provide the opportunity to undertake exciting and impactful research that will underpin a researcher’s development as an independent future leader. The Doctoral Fellowship funds researchers to undertake a PhD.
NIHR Charity Partnership Fellowships offer researchers the opportunity to be part of an active and supportive community, drawing on the enormous benefits and opportunities of cross-sector working.
For more details please see: https://www.wellbeingofwomen.org.uk/funding-opportunities/nihr-wellbeing-of-women-doctoral-fellowships
Update: Here’s another
HEE/NIHR ICA Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship
The Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship (CDRF) funds health and social care professionals to undertake a PhD and professional development in parallel, alongside continued professional practice.
The scheme is part of the HEE/NIHR Integrated Clinical Academic (ICA) Programme.
CDRFs are available to health and social care professionals (excluding doctors or dentists) who are registered with an ICA eligible regulatory body.
For more details please see: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/funding/heenihr-ica-clinical-doctoral-research-fellowship/27181?source=chainmail
If you are considering training to be a researcher and/or clinical academic who does breech research, we would love to hear from you. There are many challenges in breech research. For example, variations in when the breech is diagnosed make recruitment challenging. Sometimes dramatic variations exist between centres in external cephalic version success rates, vaginal breech birth experience and whether or not breech presentation has a dedicated care pathway. This can make recruiting sites difficult, and it is difficult to reach an adequate sample size within single-centre studies. But we have experience in navigating some of these challenges and are keen to collaborate with others.
For example, in the OptiBreech Project, we are building a database designed to support a large, multi-site observational cohort study with multiple embedded trials along the breech care pathway. Some of the questions women or potential researchers have told us would be useful to answer include:
- Does moxibustion work in a UK context, and what does it cost? This could be tested as a trial within the cohort.
- Rebozo sifting / positional exercises / homeopathy / hypnosis — do they influence the rate at which babies turn head-down, or the success rate of external cephalic version? This could be tested as a trial within the cohort.
- Does provision of an ECV service by a Breech Specialist Midwife change the outcomes of the service? And what does it cost compared to an obstetric service? This could be tested as a trial within the cohort.
- Should we offer cervical sweeps to women with breech-presenting babies? Are they helpful? Safe? From when should we offer them? This could be tested as a trial within the cohort.
- Does offering induction of labour for women with a breech-presenting baby who desire a vaginal breech birth affect modes of birth and/or outcomes? This could be tested as a trial within the cohort
If you’d like to consider applying for this or another source of funding for breech research, you are welcome to be in touch to discuss!
Shawn