Kicking the Tyres of Wellcome's New Strategy

Where it all began: Henry Wellcome. And his 'tache
(image: Wellcome Collection CC BY 4.0)

The Wellcome Trust has published its new strategy, but is it meaningful and, if so, what does it tell us about the charity's direction of travel? We kick the metaphorical tyres to see if it's a goer. 

Writing a new strategy is a difficult balancing act. You want it to be aspirational without being insipid, specific without being constrictive.  

I’ve written previously about how different research and higher education institutions meet this challenge. Many say very similar things: they all want to support excellent research, to be world-leading, and to give a nod to excitement, interdisciplinarity, sustainability or vibrancy. 

Well, who wouldn’t? However, there’s a basic rule of thumb to gauge whether a strategy is meaningful. Can you flip the assertions, can you reverse the vision, and still have a sensible strategy?  

Say, for instance, that a funder states that it ‘will conduct high-quality research and innovation and provide critical national capabilities’ (yes, we’re looking at you, UK Research and Innovation). Could you state the opposite and still have a viable strategic choice? Would you ever suggest that ‘we will conduct low-quality research and innovation and will provide trivial local capabilities’?  

Probably not. A strategy is only useful if it is clear that valid choices have been made to focus on a specific area or activity.  

Has the new Wellcome Trust strategy passed this basic test? The amount of groundwork that went into it certainly suggests so; Wellcome undertook a two-year science review to understand "where Wellcome should be in 10-15 years and what major scientific and health challenges we should seek to overcome".

Four choices 

Wellcome’s conclusion was that it had four basic choices:  

1.     To identify and accelerate nascent scientific fields that have clear potential to change human health 

2.     To create a new culture for better science 

3.     To focus on ‘discovery driven’ science, either in the long term or short term 

4.     To focus on bringing new ideas to specific existing challenges 

Broadly, it chose the fourth of these options, to focus on specific challenges. However, it also kept elements of the second and third: to nurture a positive and sustainable research culture, and to support long-term discovery research.  

These additional elements are not surprising: the trust has already made moves to change what it perceived as the ‘toxic’ research culture, and had previously changed its funding portfolio to support longer-term ‘investigator’ grants.  

Three challenges 

The trust’s challenge-focused approach is largely in line with a number of other funders, such as the Gates Foundation, the National Institute for Health Research and the missions of Horizon Europe. For Wellcome, it has decided that it should focus on:  

1.     Infectious diseases  

2.     The effects of global heating on health 

3.     Mental health 

It makes sense to have such a focus and to concentrate its significant funding (as well as its political influence) on such issues.  

However, its conclusion that “relatively little was being invested in dealing with these health challenges” is surprising. Infectious diseases and mental health, in particular, are familiar to many working on research policy and project development, as is the impact of climate change (though perhaps less so its health implications).  

Nevertheless, there is no denying their importance, and Wellcome’s focus on them will make a significant difference to pushing forward research in these areas. 

Discovery research 

Similarly, discovery (or ‘basic’) research is not unique to Wellcome, although the trust’s review suggests that “other funders invest less” in it. To support such work, Wellcome will strip back its portfolio of schemes from 43 to three (although there will be others based around the specific challenges). 

The three schemes fit broadly into three career stages: early, mid and established. As with the focus areas, this push for simplification chimes with what other funders are doing. UKRI, for instance, has said that it is going to ‘streamline’ its 200-plus existing schemes.  

More interestingly, Wellcome has decided that it needs to be more explicit about funding all disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities, as long as they are relevant to issues relating to human and animal health. It clearly wants to encourage wider engagement and interdisciplinarity. 

The Wellcome Strategy, then, appears to be thoughtful and sensible, but not radical. It’s a retrenchment of its core principles. Choices have been made, and it has managed the difficult task of balancing the aspirational vision and the specific detail.  

There’s still more to come—particularly around the size and parameters of the new schemes—but these initial signs are good. Wellcome has passed the test. The strategy is meaningful. Researchers who have the trust on their radar as a potential funder in the future should take note. 

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in November 2020 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com