Age UK have recently issued a call for Expressions of interest for PhD Studentships, Research Fellowships and Clinical Fellowships to be awarded in 2012.

Funded through the Age UK managed Research into Ageing Fund, or RiAF, and with an expected budget of £1 million for the 2012 round, these awards will fund research that will improve the health and wellbeing of older people. Through this fund Age UK aim to award grants to support research that will:

• Translate actual or potential solutions to problems into practice.
  This may include early or late-stage development of interventions, dissemination of research findings into practice and the adoption of interventions. ‘Practice’ may include health, wellbeing or medical care practice in institutional settings (e.g. hospitals and care homes); practice by professionals delivering health, wellbeing or medical services to older people in the community setting; and interventions that older people can adopt themselves in any setting.
• Apply existing evidence to generate new solutions or to improve existing solutions to problems.
• Generate new knowledge of problems of ageing where the proposed research has a clear strategic aim towards a new or improved solution to the problem.

 ‘Solutions’ (interventions) include the following, but this is not an exhaustive list:

•  Improving knowledge of the causes of age-related diseases or conditions.
• Novel methods to improve diagnosis or timeliness of diagnosis of age-related diseases or conditions.
• Prevention of age-related diseases or conditions.
• Treatment of age-related diseases or conditions.
• Management of age-related diseases or conditions.
• Delivery of care or services to older people to improve health or well-being.
• Promotion of healthy ageing or adoption, or encouragement of adoption, of actions and behaviours that would contribute to healthy ageing.

In the 2012 round Age UK are seeking to encourage research in areas of health and wellbeing that affect large numbers of older people but are under-researched, and to build capacity in ageing research in the UK.  They are particularly looking to fund research that will, or is likely to, lead to the delivery of an intervention for older people within 5 years of the end of the research project, however projects with a longer delivery time will also be considered.

The deadline for submission of Expressions of Interest is 5.00pm on Wednesday 21 December 2011.

Further information on the Age UK remit, eligibility criteria and awards is available on the website, and details of how to apply can be found on the Research into Ageing page.