More about the Centre
The Centre for Future Health is an institution-wide interdisciplinary research centre jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust and the University of York. Our ambition is to support new cutting-edge and interdisciplinary projects that address some of the world's most important health and wellbeing challenges and which will attract significant sponsorship from our major funders to sustain them into the future.
Amongst our specific aims are:
- supporting innovative reseach across all disciplines that promotes a better understanding of health and wellbeing
- nurturing the next generation of research leaders
- supporting the building of mutually beneficial partnerships inside and outside academia and with the general public
- advancing impact outside academia and knowledge exchange
Research that crosses disciplines
The Centre embraces everything from fundamental scientific research into disease mechanisms, to evaluating different costing practices for healthcare delivery, to exploiting creative technologies to improve mental health. Ensuring our future health will often require not only looking at the present but also into our past. Likewise research does not occur in disciplinary isolation: because health, disease and wellbeing are determined as much by our environment and lifestyle as by our genes, the discoveries and perspectives of scientists need to be contextualised and tempered by the insights of social scientists and colleagues from other health-related disciplines. For this reason the Centre encourages research that crosses disciplinary boundaries and establishes new models for interdisciplinary engagement.
Investing in people
Supporting academically excellent researchers and developing the next generation of research leaders is a key priority for the Centre and there are a number of schemes and initiatives to support this including our Research Fellowship Scheme. More information about this Scheme can be found in a dedicated section of the website accessible from the menu above.
Building Partnerships with Impact
We wish to provide support for building enduring and mutually beneficial relationships with external partners, be they academic, from within industry, and/or within the policy, healthcare, cultural and third sectors. These collaborations will help to ensure that the insights and discoveries that flow from the new research will find effective and sustainable applications in the real world and in clinical practice and benefit the maximum numbers of patients and other end users. We are also committed to supporting public engagement with research, including developing new creative models involving co-design and co-production and promoting best practice. More information about public engagement can be found in a dedicated section of the website accessible from the menu above.
Supporting Institutional Change
Beyond support for individual projects and collaborations, CFH aims to support institutional change at York in the areas of research and researcher support, equality and diversity, research translation and public engagement to the benefit of the whole academic community.
Our Funders
The Centre for Future Health is funded by a Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund (ISSF) Award. This is the third award made to the University under this scheme. The first two awards were made in 2011 and 2014 and supported the activities of the Centre for Chronic Diseases and Disorders (C2D2). CFH is the successor to C2D2 and will carry forward many of the initiatives it introduced but with a broader remit encompassing all aspects of human health and biomedical research. The ambitions of the Centre mirror the Trust’s overarching goal of improving health for all.
