Behind the scenes of funding rapid research: challenges and opportunities
Operationalising our appetite to fund rapid research
In 2014, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa brought global attention to the need for rapid research to help inform the response. Already set up to conduct humanitarian health research, we were quickly able to pivot and establish systems and processes to generate real time evidence addressing different aspects of the Ebola crisis. Studies we funded through this call, such as the Ebola Response Anthropology Platform, generated research that could be used there and then to inform the public health response.
Our response to the Ebola crisis underscored the need for rapid research to address unanticipated infectious disease outbreaks and unforeseen humanitarian crises. Based on our learning from that first rapid research call, we have continued to evolve our responsive mechanism and demonstrate real time impact. We have since used the mechanism to address the food insecurity crisis in the Horn of Africa in 2017, the DRC Ebola outbreak in 2019, and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. We also came to better appreciate the power of locally driven research to inform policy and practice as shared in this impact case study.
How we decide whether to launch a rapid research call
When launching a rapid research call, we consider:
- If high quality, ethical research is feasible in the emergency context
- Whether clear public health research gaps have been identified that research can address
- Whether any other significant funding is already available that would duplicate our offer
As soon as a crisis occurs, we consult with our Advisory Group, with Funding Committee members involved in the response, other humanitarian practitioners, and our funders, to determine need and how we could potentially add value. This is not always easy. Given the number of acute humanitarian crises happening at any one time, we have had to be selective to maximise our resources. This means we only launch a rapid research call when we know the research we fund will be directly relevant, impactful and fill an evidence gap. There is no doubt that with additional resources we would be able to fund more such calls.
Exploring an approach to funding studies which address foreseen evidence needs
During our early annual open research calls we invited applications for studies which had identified the need to develop or test interventions in a very specific humanitarian crisis setting – such as an earthquake or infectious disease outbreak – but where the team had yet to find the relevant context in which to conduct the research. This mechanism meant that funding could be ‘triggered’ as soon as the team were in a position to carry out the study in an appropriate setting. We expected this approach would generate lots of demand from the humanitarian research community, but only a few such proposals were submitted. Of those approved only one was ‘triggered’. While we stopped offering this type of grant, we retained flexibility. For example, after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal we provided an ‘add on’ grant to test – in real-time – a mental health and psychosocial support (MPHSS) intervention that had been developed in another part of the country to strengthen mental health resilience in natural disasters.
With food insecurity crises once again unfolding in the Horn of Africa and further afield, in 2022 we explored the potential need for rapid research to support the response. However, we received a clear message from the many experts consulted that rapid research was not the solution! Instead, they encouraged us to develop a much longer programme of research focusing on the development and testing of evidence-based nutrition intervention ‘packages’ that could be rolled out at different stages of food insecurity and in different contexts to create a globally agreed intervention response. The first phase of this ambitious study is now underway.
Learning from our rapid research mechanism and the way forward
Although some of the rapid research we’ve funded has been highly successful in informing real-time response, not all studies have achieved such impact. With each responsive call, we have considered how the delivery of rapid research can ensure meaningful impact and have factored iterative learning into our processes. For example, providing peer-learning sessions to our COVID-19 funded-studies to address operational challenges, engage key stakeholders, and achieve impact has reportedly been beneficial for grantees. Nevertheless, researchers have still found it challenging to carry out research ‘rapidly’ enough, a problem owed in part to the set-up of our funding mechanism, and to the difficulties of conducting research in highly challenging circumstances.
We know the need for rapidly available evidence in crises still exists. How we contribute to this is always at the forefront of our minds and we hope to strengthen and formalise the consultation processes we hold at the onset of crises. A challenge has always been – and will continue to be – that those with the greatest knowledge of whether rapid research is needed are often directly involved in the immediate response. Flexibility is required by everyone to contribute to these critical conversations.
We are also committed to finding out how research generated through all the studies we have funded can be better accessed by practitioners before acute crises, so they can be equipped with the latest evidence of what works when a crisis occurs.
