Heart Research UK believes that progress in the prevention, treatment and cure of heart diseases won’t be made for all patients until the people involved across all research stages reflect the patient population. There are currently major disparities in health outcomes across many factors such as gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. HRUK has a proud history of tackling inequality in heart disease The ground-breaking/award-winning HER Disease campaign, which launched in 2023, raised awareness of the inequalities women face with their heart health.
In 2025 we funded a James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership (PSP) in cardiovascular disease in women. Led by Professor Julie Sanders at Kings College London, the PSP aims to identify and prioritise the unanswered questions about cardiovascular disease in women from patient, carer and clinician perspectives for future research to address.
The HRUK five-year research strategy includes a commitment to reflect the patient population across all research activities, and we have made several changes to drive research inclusivity as a key component to delivering this. For us, research inclusivity means diversifying the people taking part in all stages of research.
Since its formation the Heart Research UK Patient and Public Network (PPN) has grown into a large, vibrant and engaged group of people with lived experience who help share the ambitions of the charity and the research projects we fund. To facilitate this we have expanded the points across the research lifecycle at which the patient voice is incorporated.
We also invested in a new role, a PPI Community Outreach Coordinator, to strengthen the involvement of underserved communities and individuals in our work. Our PPI Community Outreach Coordinator, Sophie Newbound, is passionate about making sure that lived experience meaningfully shapes heart health research and informs the wider work we do as a charity. Through building meaningful relationships, Sophie aims to help ensure that Heart Research UK’s Network is truly diverse and representative.
In 2023 we were proud to signal our support for the introduction of dedicated sex and gender policies for biomedical, health and care research in the UK through the MESSAGE (Medical Science Sex And Gender Equity) initiative and contribute to policy labs to develop a framework.
In 2024 we introduced mandatory PPI questions in our application forms to ask applicants to describe the patient populations that will be involved or participate in their research project, and outline how they will ensure diversity as appropriate. From 2026 we are specifically including considerations of sex and gender into Heart Research UK funded medical research and will ask applicants to detail how they account for sex and gender in their research design and to include disaggregated data in any reporting.
Alongside these modifications to our application and reporting forms we are providing resources to support researchers and those involved in our expert review process with the skills and tools needed to support this policy change.
These changes are the first step in ensuring applicants think about diversity when planning their research projects and applying for funding.
Heart Research UK is proud of our position in the funding landscape. Historically, we have funded projects that may have been viewed as too risky by other funders and have always required clear patient benefit from the projects we fund. We appreciate, however, that to increase diversity in those involved and participating in research we also need the research community to increase in diversity.
To drive change we have made several changes to our grant T&Cs and application forms: