DH withdraws £1.5m pharmacy research fund
The DH found "issues" with each of the four applications it received for the grant to investigate pharmacy's public health impact
EXCLUSIVE
The Department of Health (DH) has withheld £1.5 million earmarked to fund research into pharmacy's public health role because it was not satisfied with any of the applications, C+D has learned.
The DH’s Central Commissioning Facility received four applications to its call for research proposals in November 2013, but told C+D last month (August 18) that each of these had a “number of issues” regarding their “overall quality, feasibility and/or value for money”.
Pharmacy Voice chief executive Rob Darracott branded the DH’s decision a “great shame and a missed opportunity”.
The “substantial” funding could have produced a “fairly major piece of work” that filled in some of the evidence gaps identified by the government’s pharmacy and public health forum in 2013, he told C+D last Friday (September 4).
The withdrawal of the funding means Pharmacy Voice will focus on supporting smaller-scale research into the sector by Academic Health and Science Networks and other organisations, he stressed. "It's not as if research is completely dead," he added.
Two applications made it through to the DH's second round of assessments, it said, but “unfortunately” neither were awarded the money. “This is clearly not the outcome that the DH and its partners were working for,” it said.
It “assured” C+D that its decision was “informed by commissioning panels made up of academic experts” as well as “expert peer reviewers” working in pharmacy.
The DH has “no plans at present” to fund further research into pharmacy’s role, it said. The £1.5m was due to come from the DH’s existing policy research programme budget, and it would not comment on how this money will now be spent.
The DH originally planned to award the funding in August 2014, but told C+D that month that it had “no timetable” for announcing the recipient.
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How did the DH plan to spend the money? In November 2013, the DH invited proposals from academics that could begin to "strengthen the evidence base" for community pharmacy’s public health role. In their applications, researchers had to describe how they planned to find evidence of pharmacies delivering cost-effective public health services with the correct mix of staff. The successful applicant was also expected to examine which “models of delivery work best in different contexts”, and demonstrate the health and business benefits of delivering these services through community pharmacy instead of other health providers. The DH had "ideally" wanted to offer a single contract to one team, but said it could "modify" its approach depending on the quality of bids it received. It had expected the money to be spent over three years, without covering the cost of interventions. Source: DH invitation to tender, November 2013 |
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