The Academy launched its current five year strategy in April 2017. The strategy sets out our mission, vision and key objectives as well as five challenges we will address over the next five years.
Our mission:
Our mission is to advance biomedical and health research and its translation into benefits for society.
Our vision:
We are working to secure a future in which:
- UK and global health is improved by the best research.
- The UK leads the world in biomedical and health research, and is renowned for the quality of its research outputs, talent and collaborations.
- Independent, high quality medical science advice informs the decisions that affect society.
- More people have a say in the future of health and research.
Our objectives:
- Promoting excellence
- Developing talented researchers
- Influencing research and policy
- Engaging patients, the public and professionals
Our five strategic challenges:
Strategic challenge 1: To harness our expertise and convening power to tackle the biggest scientific and health challenges and opportunities facing our society.
We will achieve this by:
- Harnessing connections across research disciplines, sectors (academia, NHS, industry, charities, policymakers, media) and communities.
- Bringing Fellows, experts and stakeholders together through our working group studies, symposia and workshops to produce high quality debates and outputs that shape the policy and research agenda in the UK and beyond.
- Providing decision-makers in Government and elsewhere with timely and relevant evidence and advice.
- Maximising influence and impact through effective follow up and implementation of our recommendations.
- Establishing programmes of horizon-scanning and scientific meetings, where Fellows and experts discuss latest developments, identify opportunities and address scientific and health challenges.
- Growing the scale, visibility and impact of our FORUM network of organisations across industry, academia, healthcare, regulation and beyond, providing a unique platform for high-level, strategic interactions across these sectors.
- Influencing at the highest levels – alone and in partnership – to ensure that the UK has the resources, infrastructure and regulatory framework to optimise biomedical and health research outputs and impacts.
- Continuing to pioneer the incorporation of innovative patient, public and stakeholder dialogue into our policy activities, ensuring these views shape our recommendations and outputs.
Strategic challenge 2: To lead innovation in the development of research talent through funding and careers support.
We will achieve this by:
- Supporting the careers of the next generation of biomedical and clinical researchers through targeted grants schemes and programmes of support, including Starter Grants for Clinical Lecturers and Springboard awards for biomedical researchers.
- Maintaining a focus on career transition points, providing early career researchers with the resources and tools to develop as independent researchers.
- Enhancing our partnerships and consortia of research funders to expand our scope and reach, particularly into the non-clinical research community.
- Demonstrating value and innovation in our mentoring and career development activities, building more one-to-one mentoring pairs and optimising our physical and digital connections with early career researchers across the UK.
- Developing a new and distinctive approach to mentoring and leadership that will support and connect the next generation of research leaders, focusing on our unique role at the intersection of academia, industry and healthcare.
- Evolving our successful SUSTAIN programme for women researchers, maintaining a strong focus on how to improve gender representation along career trajectories across biomedical and clinical research fields.
- Promoting academe-industry mobility, with a focus on collaborative and cross-disciplinary working.
- Building the Academy’s role as a hub of connectivity for early career biomedical and health researchers, to facilitate networking, collaboration, exchange of ideas and acquisition of skills.
- Maintaining our work to identify and address issues affecting biomedical and health research careers, including changes in the funding landscape, clinical training pathway, and higher education policy, along with broader trends around team science, cross-disciplinary working and the impacts of data science, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence.
Strategic challenge 3: To achieve influence and impact beyond the UK to improve health and well-being.
We will achieve this by:
- Harnessing the international opportunities across the whole portfolio of Academy activities.
- Addressing topics for working group studies, symposia and workshops that address significant global health challenges and/or ensure that medical science improves sustainable development for all.
- Broadening our engagement and consultation with the global biomedical and health research community to develop our positions and inform our outputs.
- Building global influence on long-standing areas of policy interest, including use of personal data in research, use of animals in research, stems cells, embryo research, clinical trials and research regulation, alongside emerging areas such as gene editing.
- Working with Academies and other partners in countries in receipt of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) to strengthen global capacity to use research and innovation to improve health.
- Providing timely analysis to ensure that the UK’s future relationship with the EU allows UK, European and global science to flourish; maintaining connections and dialogue with the European medical research community post-Brexit, including through the Federation of European Academies of Medicine.
- Providing funding and support to global health researchers in the UK and overseas, in our role as a delivery partner of the Global Challenges Research Fund and Newton Fund.
- Promoting exchange between early career researchers in the UK and Middle East through the Daniel Turnberg Travel Fellowship Scheme.
- Seizing opportunities for influence and engagement through the InterAcademy Partnership for Health and investing in our bilateral links with overseas Academies.
Strategic challenge 4: To become the exemplar of a ‘modern scientific academy’ – diverse, trusted, dynamic, relevant and accessible.
We will achieve this by:
- Using our status as National Academy to promote the full diversity of the biomedical and health community, showcasing talent from all areas, and celebrating different perspectives and approaches to success in life and work.
- Presenting a trusted voice of biomedical and health science in the media, becoming the go-to place for expert comment and keeping the benefits of research and innovation in the political and public consciousness.
- Driving a greater diversity of expert voices in the media, through high quality media training for more women Fellows and award-holders, and other under-represented groups.
- Increasing opportunities for the broader biomedical and health research community – especially early career researchers – to engage in the Academy’s work and influence the science and policy agenda.
- Investing in our network of Academy Regional Champions, to support a programme of regional activities that facilitate a broader dialogue between the Academy and the research community across the UK.
- Engaging and inspiring all sectors of society with the science we represent, showing its relevance to modern culture and reflecting the hopes and concerns of society.
- Enhancing our use of digital communication tools to increase the openness, transparency and reach of our policy work.
- Improving our monitoring, reporting and delivery of initiatives to address diversity and inclusion across all Academy activities.
Strategic challenge 5: To enhance the Academy’s delivery capability, making sure we have the Fellows, staff, partners, resources and influence to make an even greater contribution to the UK and beyond.
We will achieve this by:
- Electing to the Fellowship the most outstanding researchers from the full breadth of biomedical and health science, including those working in multi-disciplinary fields.
- Investing time and energy in our strategic collaborations and partnerships, including with the National Academies, medical research charities, Research Councils, Learned Societies, FORUM members and others, to enhance our collective impact and reach.
- Increasing the number of partners and supporters; raising more funds from philanthropic and private sources.
- Continuing to attract investment from external partners into our programmes and projects, securing leverage for funders through further investment and demonstrating excellent value for money.
- Maximising the income of Academy’s trading company to support the work of the charity.
- Investing in our digital resources to improve the delivery and reach of our projects and programmes.
- Improving the collection of output, impact and evaluation data across all of our activities to inform process development and ensure we achieve our objectives.
- Ensuring smooth and robust governance systems, focused on close engagement with Council, Officers and Fellows, to support good decision-making and maintain the high quality of our outputs.
- Attracting and retaining the best people to work at the Academy, nurturing their talent and providing a high-quality and rewarding working environment.