Society and Ethics
The Society and Ethics programme supports research that explores the social and ethical aspects of biomedical research and health, with the ultimate aim of achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health.
All research will have to address tractable, real-world problems and, where possible, link to the Wellcome Trust’s five strategic challenges. The research can cover global or UK issues.
The key strands of the programme are to fund research that:
(1) seeks to consider social, economic and cultural factors that influence health, biomedical or health research, the development and implementation of healthcare practices, and health interventions
(2) sets out to inform answers to questions about resolving ethical dilemmas arising from biomedical or health research, the development and implementation of healthcare practices, and health interventions.
The research may be conceptual or empirical in method.
For the first strand, research could include questions about social roles, perceptions of risk and uncertainty, public attitudes and behaviour, and/or increasing our understanding of the causes of health inequalities (with a particular focus on interventions to address these).
For the second strand, we are interested in funding two broad kinds of ethical inquiry: systematic analyses of what ought or ought not to be done or of key concepts typically deployed in ethical analysis; and research combining empirical methods with normative ethical analysis, conceptual analysis or a sustained critical reflection on how data gathered might inform the resolution of ethical dilemmas.
We will also happily consider funding research that falls into both of these broad areas of inquiry.
Funded projects
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