Shaping the future: Our strategy for research and innovation in humanitarian response.
Shaping the future: Our strategy for research and innovation in humanitarian response.
Aim: to improve health outcomes for people affected by humanitarian crises by strengthening the evidence base for public health interventions.
Our globally recognised research programme focuses on maximising the potential for public health research to bring about positive change in humanitarian response and helps inform decision making in humanitarian response.
Since it was established in 2013, we have funded more than 100 research studies across a range of public health fields, bringing together researchers and humanitarian practitioners to collaboratively undertake vital research.
To ensure humanitarian health interventions are based on the latest available evidence, we work with experts to identify critical evidence gaps and then fund research that addresses critical questions. We work with ‘users’ of evidence – funders of humanitarian response; public health institutions in countries affected by crises; humanitarian coordination mechanisms such as the Global Health, WASH and Nutrition Clusters; UN agencies, including the World Health Organisation; and operational humanitarian organisations – to ensure research findings are used to inform policy and practice.
After 10 years of implementation, in 2023 an independent impact evaluation of the R2HC programme was conducted. It had the following objectives:
For ten years now, we have funded world-class research, providing grants for high quality, rigorous evidence, and offering specialised support and resources for partnering and impact. To mark this milestone, we are reflecting on what our programme has achieved, how our thinking has evolved and how we will take that knowledge forward into our next decade of work.
Our 2025 Research Forum is a 3-day event in Nairobi, Kenya between 7-9 May 2025, co-hosted with the African Population Health Research Center (APHRC). We are inviting humanitarian health research, policy, and practice experts, with experience relevant to our key objectives and themes of the Forum, to contribute to making it a stimulating, engaging, and inclusive event.
This research agenda supports the global call to action to address the rise of cardio-metabolic syndrome in humanitarian settings and prevent further unecessary deaths and comorbidities. The prioritised research questions are intended to guide researchers, humantiarian practitioners and funding agencies in deepening their understanding of context-specific needs regarding the management of NCDs.
R2HC has supported over 100 humanitarian health research projects since 2013. This collection of Impact Case Studies showcases the successes and learnings of different research projects.
Since 2013, we have launch eight ‘Open Calls’ for research that addresses specific or multiple public health issues by gathering evidence with the potential to contribute to improved public health outcomes in humanitarian contexts. We have launched a further four ‘Responsive Calls’ that aim to fund rapid research, usually 3-12 months in length, to inform response to an unforeseen health crisis in real-time.
In 2022, we launched our first thematic calls for proposals. This funding mechanism enables us to launch research funding calls focused on specific health themes or approaches. This will help to build bodies of evidence in thematic areas, responding to identified research gaps and priorities.
There will be no funding calls in 2024. For more information see an update on our plans for this year.
If you’d like to know when we launch a new funding opportunity you can sign up to our newsletter or follow us on X (Twitter).
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