How do we work with our partners to ensure our research responds directly to their needs?
New ideas emerge all the time. Our Research Partnership Team (RPT) is a multi-disciplinary group of senior researchers, who collaborate with staff from the NHS (including health service delivery, design and commissioning), Local Authorities, other academics, as well as the community and voluntary sector, to identify and progress new areas for research, with a focus on user needs. They turn important, tractable problems into research questions and ultimately, new CLAHRC research projects.
See a list of current RPT projects
The RPT comprises senior researchers with close links to, and direct experience of our health and care system. Specialisms covered by the team span statistics, health economics, qualitative research, systematic reviewing, and evaluation.

The RPT, in combination with other CLAHRC initiatives (such as partner engagement activity, secondments of health professionals via our Fellowship Scheme and patient and public involvement) enable the identification of key problems on the ground which have widespread relevance for the NHS, patients and public health.
The RPT is helping to build an in-depth corporate ‘memory’ of the CLAHRC academic/NHS/LA community and research priorities and our responses to them, which will generate transferable methodological learning between and across projects.
Research Partnership Team: taking projects forward
The criteria the RPT use to decide if and how research ideas emanating from our partners in the NHS and public health are taken forward can be viewed in this diagram: