Allied health professional and psychologists-led research grants

We will find ways to make kidney transplants last longer, dialysis more tolerable, reduce the burden of treatment and monitoring, and improve quality of life for people living with kidney disease. We will harness and develop technology to enable people to take control of their kidney health. 

We are particularly interested in receiving grant applications that address these themes: 

• Bringing kidney treatment closer to home: This could relate to novel technologies that improve dialysis or digital technologies that help reduce the number of visits to healthcare professionals. 

• Change conversations: This could relate to shared decision making and education 

• Improve treatment access and equity: Making sure everyone gets the treatment they need regardless of location or background 

• Address complications associated with renal replacement therapies: This could relate to co-occurring conditions or complications of renal replacement therapy. 

We will investigate how kidney disease is linked to other multiple long-term conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, obesity and liver disease. Under the holistic area of cardiovascular, renal and metabolic conditions, we would welcome applications to better understand the interplay between these conditions. With a focus on cardiovascular disease and kidney disease to reveal the pathways linking these conditions, and improvements in prevention and earlier detection of kidney disease and subsequent management of multiple long-term conditions.  

We are keen receive applications for grants that address our recently published research recommendations in diabetic kidney disease which was created jointly with Diabetes UK and Breakthrough type 1 diabetes with focuses on understanding causal mechanisms, improving prevention and diagnosis, addressing health inequalities, improving care and supporting self-management, for patients and their carers. 

We will highlight the inequalities of kidney disease; we will investigate why some groups of people are more at risk of kidney disease, and progress to kidney failure much faster. We will press for greater diversity in kidney research, so that discoveries benefit everyone.

We are keen to receive proposals that address kidney health inequalities, particularly those research evidence gaps that have emerged from the Time to Act: A new review of kidney health inequalities report launched in July 2024.

Mental health and wellbeing cuts across all elements of living with kidney disease and all treatments including dialysis and transplantation. We will fund research which supports the development of services and interventions that promote a multi-disciplinary approach to mental health and wellbeing as an integral, whole-person approach to renal care. 

We welcome grant applications addressing kidneys and cancer.  

We are particularly interested in receiving applications that address the following overarching priorities:  

• reducing the number of people developing kidney cancer  

• prevent kidney damage due to cancer treatment 

• reducing the risk of cancer due to treatment of kidney disease 

We are interested in projects that will improve the earlier detection, diagnosis and treatment of kidney cancers, reduce nephrotoxicity caused by chemotherapy, and investigate cancers associated with immunotherapy and post-transplant immunosuppression (such as skin cancer and lymphoma)