Funding Opportunity – Mental Health Award: Leveraging Longitudinal Data to Transform Early Intervention

Wellcome is inviting purposes for a serious analysis funding initiative aimed toward revolutionizing early interventions in psychological well being. The Mental Health Award helps initiatives that leverage longitudinal knowledge and superior analytics to improve early identification and response to anxiousness, melancholy, and psychosis. Projects should combine this knowledge-pushed method with experimental analysis to allow simpler, focused early interventions.

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Scheme at a Glance

• Funding quantity: £1 million to £5 million per mission

• Duration: 3 to 5 years

• Eligibility: Global (excluding mainland China)

• Career stage: Early, mid, and established researchers

• Application deadline: 22 July 2025, 17:00 BST

• Coapplicants: Accepted

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Purpose of the Award

The award is designed to fund interdisciplinary groups utilizing longitudinal knowledge to innovate early intervention methods in psychological well being. Applicants should exhibit integration of psychological well being science and knowledge science, with the aim of precision and effectiveness in early-stage intervention for top-burden circumstances like anxiousness, melancholy, and psychosis.

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Who Can Apply

Applicants have to be:

• Teams from any related self-discipline and from eligible organizations worldwide (excluding mainland China)

• Inclusive of a minimum of one psychological well being scientist and one knowledge scientist

• Committed to moral and equitable partnerships

• Capable of involving lived expertise experience throughout the mission staff

• From an appropriately sized staff of two–8 candidates (collaborators not restricted)

• Supported by an eligible administering group able to managing the award

The scheme encourages purposes from:

• Diverse, interdisciplinary groups

• Researchers new to psychological well being or knowledge science

• Teams primarily based in low- and center-revenue international locations (LMICs)

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Applicant Requirements

Lead Applicants Must:

• Have management expertise in giant-scale collaborative analysis

• Dedicate a minimum of 20% of analysis time to the mission

• Be affiliated with an eligible group, with a safe place or a assured contract for the award’s length

Coapplicants Must:

• Make important contributions to the analysis (e.g., main mission parts)

• Be in a position to commit a minimum of 20% of analysis time

• Have institutional help, however not essentially a everlasting contract

Collaborators May:

• Contribute experience or assets (e.g., datasets, scientific entry, group networks)

• Have no minimal time dedication or eligibility constraints

• Not obtain direct fee however may be reimbursed for mission bills

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Eligibility for Research Awards: Key Considerations

1. Career Breaks, Parental Leave, and Sick Leave

We perceive that profession breaks, parental depart, and lengthy-time period sick depart can disrupt your analysis trajectory. If you’ve hung out away from analysis due to any of those causes, you might be nonetheless eligible to apply for a analysis award. We will take these intervals into consideration in the course of the overview means of your application. This ensures that your circumstances are acknowledged, and we will assess your application within the correct context, contemplating the time you will have spent away out of your analysis work.

2. Retirement

If you will have retired and are contemplating making use of for a analysis award, please bear in mind that extra steps are required. You should contact us earlier than submitting your application. This is to guarantee that you’ve a assured house inside your administering group throughout the award. The administration of the award requires affirmation of help, which is important to your application to be processed efficiently.

3. Part-Time Applicants

Both lead candidates and coapplicants can apply for a analysis award whereas working part-time. However, part-time candidates are anticipated to contribute a minimum of 20% of their analysis time to the mission. The nature of your part-time work should align with the profitable supply of the mission, guaranteeing you can nonetheless fulfill the obligations of the award regardless of working fewer hours. It’s essential to exhibit that your part-time commitments gained’t intervene with the profitable completion of the analysis.

Eligibility Considerations

You are NOT eligible if:

• Your analysis includes fund transfers to mainland China

• You can’t commit enough time or assets to the mission

• You exceed the allowable variety of Wellcome awards

• You apply to this funding name greater than twice (both as one lead and one coapplicant, or two coapplicants)

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Eligible Administering Organisations

Organizations should:

• Be positioned exterior mainland China

• Be in a position to signal Wellcome’s grant circumstances

• Fall beneath the next classes:

  • Higher training establishments

  • Research institutes

  • Not-for-revenue/non-governmental analysis organizations

  • Non-academic healthcare organizations

Note: Commercial organizations can’t function administering organizations, although coapplicants and collaborators could also be primarily based in them.

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Expectations for Administering Organizations

Organizations ought to:

• Align the application with their strategic targets

• Ensure availability of vital house and assets

• Support candidates with onboarding and steady skilled growth (minimal 10 days/yr)

• Promote a analysis tradition that’s inclusive, moral, open, and supportive

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Collaboration Requirements

If involving a number of organizations, a proper collaboration settlement have to be in place, addressing:

• Intellectual property (IP) possession and administration

• Confidentiality and publication rights

• Access to background and foreground IP

• Commercialization phrases in keeping with Wellcome’s IP coverage

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Inclusivity and Research Environment

Wellcome prioritizes numerous, inclusive analysis environments that foster collaboration, respect, and stakeholder engagement. Projects ought to be open, clear, and designed with group enter and moral duty.

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For extra particulars on making use of, eligibility, or collaboration pointers, refer to Wellcome’s complete documentation and speak to assets.

Is Your Research Right for This Call?

Wellcome is looking for modern and impactful analysis proposals that concentrate on the early identification of hysteria, melancholy, and/or psychosis. If your analysis goals to predict the onset, development, or therapy response of those circumstances on the particular person or subgroup degree utilizing strong knowledge-pushed strategies, your proposal could also be eligible.

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What Your Proposal Must Include

To be thought-about, your analysis proposal should:

• Target particular person or subgroup-degree prediction of the onset, early development, and/or therapy response of hysteria, melancholy, or psychosis.

• Leverage current longitudinal knowledge, outlined as knowledge collected from the identical people at a minimal of three time factors.

• Validate prediction fashions in totally unbiased datasets, past easy knowledge splits or inner validations.

• Integrate an experimental element that enhances the longitudinal knowledge evaluation and advances mechanistic or translational insights.

• Use strong and applicable knowledge analytics, with a transparent rationale to your chosen methodology(s).

• Include a multidisciplinary staff, with a minimum of one psychological well being researcher and one knowledge scientist.

• Incorporate lived expertise experience in significant and moral methods all through the analysis course of.

• Demonstrate translational potential, exhibiting clear hyperlinks between your mannequin and actual-world early intervention methods.

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Scope of Research

Focus Areas:

• Early identification of hysteria, melancholy, and/or psychosis.

• Predictive fashions primarily based on scientific signs, practical impairments, or different related markers.

• Models that allow earlier intervention than is presently doable.

• Both knowledge-pushed and speculation-pushed approaches are in scope.

Prediction fashions should:

• Center on people or subgroups, not inhabitants-degree threat.

• Account for predictors throughout private, household, and societal ranges.

• Include moral issues round prediction and early identification.

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Use of Longitudinal Data

Key necessities:

• Use datasets with a minimal of three time factors.

• Include current cohorts, biobanks, well being data, group panels, or trial knowledge.

• Allow for dataset enrichment, corresponding to linkage, harmonisation, or enlargement.

• Ensure moral entry and affirmation from knowledge holders.

Projects utilizing underrepresented populations should actively deal with knowledge bias and mitigate potential hurt.

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Model Validation

Your prediction mannequin have to be examined utilizing fully unbiased datasets. This consists of:

• Justification of the validation dataset(s).

• Harmonisation methods.

• Clear and rigorous evaluation plans.

Validation utilizing subsets or check splits of the unique dataset shouldn’t be enough.

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Experimental Component

An experimental side have to be included to:

This could embody:

• Human scientific research.

• Neuroscience analysis.

• Cellular, molecular, or animal research.

• Pilot trials or feasibility research.

Simulated knowledge-solely initiatives are not eligible.

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Methodological Rigor

Data evaluation ought to be grounded in greatest practices for moral, reproducible, and safe knowledge science, together with:

• Comprehensive knowledge administration plans.

• Adherence to moral knowledge requirements (e.g. Wellcome’s Ethical Framework).

• Alignment with knowledgeable consent.

• Transparency in methodology and open science ideas.

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Team Composition

Your core staff should embody:

• At least one knowledge scientist (e.g. analyst, engineer, ethicist).

• At least one psychological well being professional (e.g. psychiatrist, psychologist, neuroscientist).

Additional staff members may embody:

• Lived expertise advisors.

• Social scientists.

• Experimental medication specialists.

• Public well being consultants.

• Experts from low- and center-revenue international locations (LMICs), particularly when working with LMIC datasets.

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Involving Lived Experience

Lived expertise consultants have to be built-in into your analysis as:

• Co-applicants.

• Collaborators.

• Strategic advisors.

Their involvement ought to span governance, design, and supply, not be restricted to participant recruitment.

Read more about our approach to involving Lived Experience expertise.

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Translational Potential

Your analysis ought to clearly exhibit how the predictive mannequin may:

• Inform early scientific interventions.

• Enhance proof-primarily based pointers.

• Be carried out in actual-world settings.

Models that allow earlier recognition and therapy supply the very best influence potential.

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Encouraged (But Not Required) Areas of Focus

Proposals are particularly welcome in the event that they:

• Analyse qualitative or unstructured knowledge, corresponding to transcriptions, wearable knowledge, or audiovisual materials.

• Prioritise analysis in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly utilizing underutilised datasets.

• Incorporate public engagement and “two-way” communication methods with analysis individuals and communities.

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Prohibited Scope

Your analysis proposal should not embody:

• Focus on normal inhabitants-degree threat elements.

• Target neurodevelopmental or neurodegenerative circumstances.

• Prioritise different psychological well being circumstances exterior anxiousness, melancholy, and psychosis.

• Rely solely on simulated knowledge.

• Propose establishing solely new longitudinal datasets.

• Pursue curiosity-pushed analysis unrelated to early identification.

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Costs Wellcome Will Cover

You can request funding for:

• Personnel/employees

• Equipment and consumables

• Data entry costs

• Experimental and scientific prices

• Travel and subsistence

• Lived expertise involvement

• Public engagement

• Training {and professional} growth

• Open entry publication

• Overheads and inflation changes

Please overview the total eligibility and price range steerage for particular circumstances.

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Ready to Apply?

If your mission aligns with these aims and necessities, and you might be prepared to push the boundaries of early psychological well being identification, this funding name could also be your alternative. Ensure your proposal is detailed, collaborative, moral, and centered on actual-world influence.

Where and How to Apply

Applications have to be submitted by the Wellcome Funding Platform. You can save your progress and return to your application at any time.

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What You Need to Provide

In addition to the application type, you have to add a letter confirming the usage of longitudinal datasets:

• A single A4 letter itemizing:

  • Each dataset you intend to use

  • The dataset contact’s title, analysis title, and deal with

• Confirmation from the dataset holder or affiliated consultant that:

• Attach this letter as “Additional Information” – it won’t rely in the direction of the 2-web page restrict for more information.

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Application Timeline and Deadlines

Make positive to permit time for:

• Reading all steerage supplies

• Collaborating with coapplicants

• Reviewing and modifying your application

• Administering organisation approval and submission

Final deadline: 17:00 BST on 22 July 2025

Key Dates

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Accessibility and Support

Wellcome supplies help for candidates with disabilities or lengthy-time period well being circumstances, together with:

If you require additional help or want an extension due to accessibility wants, contact:
fundingsupport@wellcome.org

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First-Time Applicants (Administering Organisations)

If your organisation has by no means utilized for Wellcome funding earlier than:

1. Email fundingsupport@wellcome.org with:

2. Wellcome will create an organisation account and supply entry to authorised approvers.

Guidance for Research Offices

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Application Process Overview

1. Before You Apply

2. Submit to Your Administering Organisation

• Complete the application on the Wellcome platform

• Submit it to your organisation’s authorised approver

• Allow time for overview and potential revisions

3. Organisation Submits to Wellcome

• Deadline: 17:00 BST, 22 July 2025

• Late submissions won’t be accepted

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Application Review Process

Eligibility and Remit

Applications are first checked to guarantee they meet eligibility standards and fall throughout the funding name’s remit. Ineligible purposes will likely be withdrawn, and you may be notified.

Shortlisting

A various, worldwide committee will consider eligible purposes primarily based on 4 weighted standards. If shortlisted, you’ll be invited to a digital interview with up to three coapplicants.

Expert Review

Shortlisted proposals bear written professional overview. Unattributed reviewer feedback will likely be shared with you earlier than the interview.

Interview (2–4 December 2025)

• Conducted on-line

• Begins with a presentation (submission necessities supplied prematurely)

• Committee assesses your full proposal, together with professional suggestions

• Final funding choices are primarily based on the interview, proposal, and critiques

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Final Decision

The Wellcome Mental Health Team will make last funding choices. You’ll obtain an electronic mail notification shortly after choices are made in December 2025.

Unsuccessful candidates will obtain written suggestions.

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Assessment Criteria

Applications are assessed utilizing the next weighted standards:

1. Research Question & Methodology (40%)

• Advances early identification for anxiousness, melancholy, or psychosis

• Strong rationale and strong methodology

• Ethical and inclusive method

• Validation in unbiased datasets

• Risk mitigation plans

2. Team Suitability (20%)

• Collaborative construction together with lived expertise consultants

• Lead applicant demonstrates related analysis and management abilities

• Coapplicants contribute considerably and appropriately

3. Research Location & Environment (20%)

• Supportive establishment with related infrastructure

• Inclusive and moral analysis atmosphere

• Clear administration plans and safeguarding measures

4. Lived Experience Involvement (20%)

• Integrated involvement in any respect mission levels

• Representation in management and governance

• Fair compensation for contributions

Guidance on lived experience involvement

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For full particulars and to start your application, go to the Wellcome Funding Platform.

Application Deadline: All purposes have to be submitted by 17:00 BST on 22 July 2025.

Panel Discussion Replay: Longitudinal Datasets in LMICs

We just lately hosted a panel dialogue on the alternatives and challenges of conducting longitudinal psychological well being analysis in low- and center-revenue international locations (LMICs). Topics included:

• Navigating psychological well being analysis in contexts the place stigma nonetheless exists

• The worth of longitudinal analysis in LMIC settings

• Building on and accessing current datasets in these areas

🎥 Watch the total recording HERE (Please notice: enjoying the video units a 3rd-occasion cookie. See our cookie policy for particulars.)

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Collaboration Opportunity: Neuromatch Matchmaking Service

To assist facilitate new collaborations for this funding name, Wellcome has partnered with Neuromatch, an AI-pushed platform that connects researchers primarily based on experience and shared pursuits. This free matchmaking service is particularly designed to help connections amongst:

You can discover potential collaborations which will strengthen your application. Use of Neuromatch is non-obligatory however extremely really helpful.

Registration Deadline: Wednesday 14 May, 23:59 BST
Register for Neuromatch matchmaking

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Scope Check Guidance

Unsure whether or not your analysis thought matches throughout the scope of the decision? You can request a scope check by submitting a concise abstract (not more than 200 phrases) by Tuesday 8 July at 17:00 BST.

Email: ScopeChecksMH@wellcome.org
Subject line: Mental Health Award: Leveraging longitudinal knowledge to remodel early intervention in psychological well being

Your electronic mail ought to embody the next format:

• Early identification goal: [One sentence]

• Longitudinal dataset(s): [One sentence]

• Independent dataset(s) for validation: [One sentence]

• Experimental element(s): [One sentence]

• Mental well being situation(s)/symptom(s): [One sentence]

• Summary: [Up to 200 words]

We goal to reply inside every week with both an ‘in scope’ or ‘out of scope’ determination. Please notice: this course of shouldn’t be required and doesn’t affect funding choices.

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Useful Tools and Resources

Atlas of Longitudinal Datasets

Search over 1,600 international datasets by our Atlas of Longitudinal Datasets, together with biobanks, cohort research, registries, and family panels. This free device helps you determine applicable knowledge sources to your analysis.

Ethical Governance Framework for Mental Health Databanks

Our commissioned report supplies a framework for ethical governance in psychological well being databanks. We strongly encourage candidates to overview the knowledge evaluation part (web page 38 onwards) for greatest practices.

Guidance on Ethical and Equitable Partnerships

Strong partnerships are key to impactful analysis. Explore these assets to information your method:

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Contact Us

• Eligibility or Application Questions: For queries associated to eligibility, application processes, or what we provide, contact our funding information advisers.

• Scope Questions: If uncertain whether or not your mission matches the scope, overview the scope check process and electronic mail us by 8 July.

• Please notice: we don’t present suggestions on the competitiveness of proposals.

For additional info go to HERE

Stay on www.opportunitiesforyouth.org for extra alternatives

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