New £13 million PhD programme to tackle growing health issue of Multiple Long Term Conditions

There is an urgent need to develop a clinical academic workforce equipped to address the complex biological, social and health-system drivers of MLTCs, which remains one of the most pressing yet least understood global challenges in healthcare today. 

Working closely with partners, we want to build on our successful Wellcome-funded Multimorbidity PhD Programme, which trained 32 fellows across medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy and allied health professions. 

This new programme will draw on outstanding strengths across four Scottish universities, and with global partnerships, we will integrate biological mechanisms of disease, AI-enabled health data, epidemiology and social science to generate new insights into why and how MLTCs develop, their prevention, and how care can be improved, advancing UK leadership in MLTCs.

Healthcare Professional researchers are essential for the research sector. Working on the frontlines of healthcare – from doctors and nurses, to physios and pharmacists – they gather a wealth of crucial insights that sustains excellent discovery research. However, we know that getting onto and progressing through the dual career pathway with the need to balance research alongside intensive clinical practice is often incredibly challenging. 

The 14 doctoral programmes we are supporting address those barriers, particularly through the innovative use of the funding to support career transitions and progression. As well as building positive research and training environments, as a cohort of programmes they bring together a diverse mix of specialists, encouraging collaboration on a whole new scale. These programmes won’t just provide essential research qualifications, but a platform to conduct world-class research and make discoveries that transform our health for generations to come.