Measuring our impact

We believe that we have a responsibility to measure the impact that Asthma UK-funded research has had, or will have, on the lives of people with asthma, and to convey this information to our supporters, and the 5.4 million people living with asthma in the UK.

The vast majority of our income comes from members of the public, companies, charitable trusts and foundations, all of whom share our belief that funding world-class medical and scientific research will play a key role in improving the health and well-being of people affected by asthma.

In addition to demonstrating accountability and good research governance, detailed information on the outcomes and impact of individual research projects will also give us a robust evidence base that will inform our decisions on how we fund research in the future.

However, measuring the value and benefits of medical research is challenging and complex. Many research impacts are not easily quantifiable and it is difficult to attribute clinical improvement or innovation to a particular research result.

We have therefore commissioned experts in this field, the Health Economics Research Group (HERG) at Brunel University, to help us evaluate the returns from Asthma UK-funded research.

HERG has an international reputation in health economics, and has worked with many of the UK’s leading funders of medical research such as the NHS, Wellcome Trust, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and Arthritis Research Campaign.

They have developed a ‘Payback Framework’ model which is now an internationally recognised approach for assessing the impact from health research. The framework includes a multi-dimensional categorisation of benefits from research.

These benefits range from knowledge production as represented by publications, through to impacts on research capacity and targeting, policy and product development and health and broader economic gains.

The HERG team is currently undertaking a structured evaluation of
Asthma UK-funded research projects funded by the charity after 1 January 1996 and which were completed before 31 December 2006.

The analysis also includes two professorships, and ten fellowships.

We look forward to announcing the results of this work in early 2011.