Asthma UK

Description

Asthma UK is the only national charity dedicated to asthma in the UK and as such has a responsibility to tackle the issues affecting people with asthma today, and to conduct research that will lead to a better future for people affected by asthma tomorrow. Asthma kills three people each day and yet research into asthma is under-resourced and under-funded.

Asthma UK funds research into all aspects of asthma, from scientific studies into the biology of our lungs, through to the creation of new treatments and investigating its causes. To date, the charity has spent over £50 million on basic and clinical research, making us a significant contributor to the asthma research landscape in the UK.

Public involvement in research

Asthma UK works with a group of approximately 150 volunteers called the Research and Policy (RaP) volunteers, who are interested in contributing towards research in various ways.

Our RaP volunteers directly contribute towards Asthma UK’s research programme, including: setting our research priorities for our research strategy, reviewing and commenting on applications that we receive through our different funding schemes, and sitting on our research review panel which makes the decisions of which applications to fund. Through the involvement of people with asthma in all aspects of our research processes, we ensure that we fund research that is truly important and that will impact on the lives of people with asthma.

We also circulate fortnightly bulletins to our RaP volunteers alerting them to involvement in external research opportunities, such as: campaigning for research, commenting on guidelines, sitting on working groups, boards or steering groups looking at a broad range of issues, speaking to researchers about their experiences of asthma, and taking part in research studies, focus groups and surveys.

http://www.asthma.org.uk/volunteer-help-us-with-our-research