Universities Compete for New GambleAware Research Grant
Problem Gambling charity GambleAware have announced they will award a £4 million grant to set up a gambling harms research hub at a UK University.
Over the next 8 months, Universities will have the chance to apply for the grant. The goal is to establish the nation’s leading academic facility in this field with the aim of producing research and literature that contributes to GambleAware’s aims of creating a society without gambling harms.
The initial bung will hope to establish this hub at a respected institution, and then the facility can sustain and grow the program through further funding.
Though the successful applicant will host the new research hub, the ongoing academic work will involve many outside partners and institutions with the aim of furthering knowledge and informing policy on problem gambling in society.
The successful institution will likely have a strong background in a mix of the following interdisciplinary and related academic fields:
- Clinical Health
- Psychology
- Public Health
- Mental Health
- Epidemiology
- Health Economics
- Health Inequalities
The interim Research Director at GambleAware, Alison Clare, said of the grant:
“This is a fantastic opportunity for a British university to develop and innovate in a relatively under-researched field, bringing to bear a much wider range of academic disciplines than are currently engaged in gambling harms research.”
The announcement marks a move in a new direction for the charity. Though GambleAware have sponsored and produced much smaller-scale research on problem gambling in society, the establishment of an independent academic research hub is a more ambitious project.
Clare described the project as “a different type of grant award to the smaller projects and programmes in our current research portfolio, with GambleAware taking a much more arm’s length approach in guiding the area of research focus.”
Some institutions have already applied with some very “creative and innovative proposals” at this early stage.
If you want to learn more about GambleAware’s work on problem gambling, please visit their website. For more information about how to gamble responsibly, please visit our Responsible Gambling page.