Our Impact: Changing the future of healthcare with science

How your support is helping to improve health for everyone

Driving change at a time of crisis

In response to the many health challenges faced by peoples across the world, we are able to draw on our Fellowship and global network of leading experts to identify where we can add most value – be it running impactful research programmes, supporting researchers on the frontline, facilitating collaborations to solve key challenges, influencing policy decisions, ensuring patient involvement in healthcare provision, or developing leadership for the future.

Our donors and funders ensure we have the independence, agility and flexibility to respond where the need is greatest and ensure we are leading the way in tackling the key challenges facing the health of our society. During 2021-22, we continued to provide critical advice to government, building on work that was launched at pace in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; our policy work also included key projects around climate change, health inequalities and mental health; we continued to fund research grants and expanded our careers support for early and mid-career researchers; and we engaged with our largest cohort of patients as we continued our advocacy for patient participation. Key achievements from the year across these areas are highlighted in our new impact report.

During the year, we also developed our new ten-year strategy to bring together our vision and mission with key objectives and goals to tackle the major healthcare challenges we face. The support of our donors and funders is at the heart of achieving these goals and we look forward to sharing our progress with you.   

Whilst support from government underpins much of our work, donations from individuals, including our Fellows, companies, trusts and foundations allow us to be truly independent, agile and responsive so we can help create an open, progressive and diverse medical research community that is able to tackle some of the most pressing health issues both at home and on the global stage. 

A year of impact in numbers

Grants

• Over £9m of funding was awarded to 113 new grantees during the 2021 financial year
• For every £1 awarded in Starter Grant funding approximately £13 has been leveraged in further support
• In Round 7 of our Springboard programme, which supports newly independent biomedical researchers launching their research careers, 49 awards were made to researchers across 32 institutions worth £4.85m in total across the length and breadth of the UK

Careers

• PILLAR, our online community for AMS grant awardees and programme participants, reached over 400 users
• Our new alumni programme, HIVE, launched in September and has more than 200 members from around the globe
• Nearly 1500 mentees now benefit from the AMS Mentoring programme, with 154 early career researchers being paired with Academy Fellows this year
• 45 women participated in media training as part of our SUSTAIN programme supporting women in research careers

Policy

• More than 2200 attendees took part in our Policy-led events, of which 84% were run in partnership with organisations
• We engaged with Government and policymakers at the most senior levels including regular meetings with Ministers, the Government Chief Scientist and others.
• Our latest report, ‘A healthy future: tackling climate change and health together’, has been downloaded nearly 6000 times and cited as a key source in NHS Scotland's new climate emergency and sustainability strategy
• Our FORUM network brought together 45 members linking industry, academia, healthcare and the wider sector for cross-sector policy discussion, hosting 12 events with 99 speakers and 1356 attendees

Communications

• Around 6000 pieces of media coverage on COVID-19 have referenced the Academy since the start of the pandemic
• We involved 63 people with lived experience of various health conditions, such as patient representatives, carers and public contributors, in nine different Academy projects

Fellows

• 50 new Fellows were elected, bringing our total Fellowship to 1362, providing a wealth of expertise in support of our work
• 350 Fellows attended our President’s virtual regional tour from across the UK, including the devolved nations, as part of gathering evidence for our new strategy