Funding

GDAR is funded through the NIHR Global Health Research initiative.

NIHR Global Health Research builds on existing expertise within the UK and the wider global health research community to commission and support internationally outstanding applied health research which addresses issues affecting the poorest and most vulnerable people in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) using Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding.

The GDAR Network was initially funded from 2017 to 2021. You can read about the research conducted under this grant, which explored how policy, community and commercial systems shape diet and physical activity environments and behaviours in cities in low and middle income countries.

 We are now building on the first phase of our research, to further explore these phenomena, in particular how they interact with urbanisation and climate change. This is enabled by new funding from NIHR Global Health Research, beginning September 2021. Read more.

NIHR Financial Assurance Fund

GDAR was also successful in applying to the NIHR Financial Assurance Fund to support financial management capacity building with our LMIC partners and the convergence of financial standards. The funds will be used to leverage expertise and best practice across the GDAR Network as a whole, to strengthen the existing foundations for financial management and to enable knowledge exchange. This included hosting a financial capacity building workshop in Cambridge in September 2019, attended by Finance Officers from each of the Network partners.

GDAR Directorate

Network Joint Leads

  • Dr Tolullah Oni, Clinical Senior Research Associate, MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge. UK Joint Lead for GDAR.
  • Alafia Samuels. Research Fellow and former Director of the George Alleyne Chronic Disease Research Centre, University of the West Indies. LMIC Joint Lead for GDAR.

Partner Co-Leads

Within each partner institution, there are two Co-Leads with responsibility to deliver specific research objectives as well as coordinate Network activities with other local research work. 

A full list of researchers and staff in the GDAR Network can be found here.

International Strategic Advisory Group (ISAG)

The GDAR International Strategic Advisory Group advises the GDAR Director, Joint Lead and the Network Steering Group on GDAR scientific strategy. The group meets at least annually and its members are available throughout the year to provide advice to GDAR members.

Network Evaluation

GDAR commissioned an independent formative evaluation of the GDAR Network. This was conducted between February and July 2020 by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). Read more.