GACD announces topics for 2021-2023 funding calls

Dear colleagues,

Recently the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD) announced the focus of its next three funding calls. This advanced notice is intended to provide researchers with the opportunity to plan applications well in advance and find the right international collaborators for their research areas. As CIHR is a proud member of the GACD and has participated in every previous GACD funding call, I wanted to ensure that Canadian researchers had this information in the hopes that it proves helpful.

The anticipated topics of the next three GACD funding calls are:

  • 2021: NCD prevention in adolescents, young adults and other vulnerable stages across the life course: Implementation science focused on addressing common NCD risk factors through interventions that reduce health risk and/or enhance positive health and lifestyle behaviours in young people, and in other vulnerable life course stages (e.g., childhood, elderly).
  • 2022: Interventions in urban environments to reduce NCD risk: Implementation science focused on individual and/or structural level interventions that can reduce NCD risk and/or maximise the health-promoting potential of cities. Transdisciplinary partnerships among health, urban planning and behavioural science experts are encouraged.
  • 2023: Integrated management of multimorbidity: Implementation science focused on integrating interventions for optimising management and care for patients with multimorbidity.

By way of background, the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases is a collection of the world’s biggest public research funding agencies that coordinates and supports research activities that address the prevention and treatment of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) on a global scale. NCDs account for 60% of deaths globally, with low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) disproportionately affected, shouldering – 80% of all chronic disease-related deaths.

Together, the GACD members represent 80% of public health research funding worldwide. At the CIHR Institute of Population & Public Health (IPPH), we provide input on GACD priorities – which most recently has included hypertension, diabetes, mental health and cancer – and contribute financially to the Canadian pools of funding. While all of the work done through the GACD aligns with IPPH’s Global Health Policy priority area and our interest in supporting implementation science, we are particularly pleased to see 2022’s anticipated call focused on urban environments.

Indeed, since the launch of our Healthy Cities Research Initiative, IPPH has been a strong advocate for the potential of reshaping urban environments so they can become engines of good health. IPPH advocated for the GACD to focus a future funding call on urban environments and we are therefore delighted that it has done so.

The first of the funding calls highlighted above is tentatively set to launch in Summer 2021. We will continue to keep you updated about GACD funding calls and it is my hope that Canadian researchers will take full advantage of them.

Best,
Steven

Steven J. Hoffman JD PhD LLD | @shoffmania
Scientific Director, CIHR Institute of Population & Public Health
Director, Global Strategy Lab, and
Professor of Global Health, Law, and Political Science, York University

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