Our aim is to create a diverse and inclusive research environment.
But first we need to get a good understanding of who's applying for research funding, who's receiving it and who's helping make the funding decisions.
Between 2020 and 2023, we collected data related to age, disability status, ethnicity and gender from our grant applicants, award holders and funding committee members. This report is our first published analysis of the data that we hold so far.
This work forms part of our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy.
View the full report or keep reading for an overview including key findings and next steps.
View the report
Why diversity in research is important
Including people with different life experiences brings unique perspectives, enabling innovation that can lead to better and more relevant research results.
Funding people from the widest possible pool is essential to ensure we fund the most talented researchers to help save and improve lives affected by heart and circulatory disease.
Limitations of our data
While our data has important limitations, we view it as a valuable starting point for future comparisons and opportunities for improvement.
The limitations are:
- We’re comparing our diversity data to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data from 2022 for UK biosciences academic staff population. This is a broad sector data that is not specific to cardiovascular researchers.
- We do not yet have data related to all legally protected characteristics. This is something we’ll be addressing.
Our key findings
The following are some key findings based on the four protected characteristics that we studied so far and that are covered in our report:
Age
- Researchers between ages 30 to 44 (43%) and ages 45 to 59 (46%) together accounted for 89% of all applicants. This was in line with our broad range of research funding schemes to support cardiovascular researchers at all stages of their careers.
- The majority of our fellowship applicants (77%) were aged 30 to 44. This was in line with the ambition for most of our fellowship schemes to support early- to mid-career level researchers.
Disability status
- The proportion of applicants for BHF funding who disclosed a disability or long-term health condition was similar to that of UK biosciences academic staff.
- Applicants with a disclosed disability or long-term health condition had a similar success rate to applicants with no disclosed disability or long-term health condition.
Ethnicity
- The proportion of applicants for BHF funding from Ethnic Minority backgrounds reflected their representation amongst UK biosciences staff.
- When comparing the success rate of BHF funding applicants from all ethnic minority backgrounds compared to White applicants, overall, there was no difference.
- However, the success rate for Asian/Asian British applicants was significantly lower than that for White applicants. We could not look at other individual ethnic groups due to the numbers being too small to study.
Gender
- A lower proportion of applicants for BHF funding were women compared to academic staff working in biosciences in the UK.
- Female and male applicants for BHF funding had equal success rates.
BHF research funding committees
The surveyed independent experts who sit on our grant committees to make funding recommendations, had similar characteristics to UK biosciences academic staff.
- Age: 73% of our funding committee members were aged 45 to 59 and 98% were 45 years old or older.
- Disability status: 8% of our funding committee members had disclosed a disability or long-term health condition.
- Ethnicity: 89% of our funding committee members were from a White ethnic background. There is currently no representation of Black/African/Caribbean/Black British background.
- Gender: 65% of our funding committee members were men while women made up 35%.
Our next steps
We’re committed to taking the following actions to address underrepresentation in cardiovascular research:
1. Improving our understanding of the real and perceived obstacles that cardiovascular researchers are faced with
We plan on doing this by:
- expanding and enhancing the demographic data collected
- continuing to engage with the research community
- evaluating the cardiovascular research workforce in the UK.
2. Making our research funding decision-making process more inclusive and transparent
We plan on doing this by:
- working in partnership with other cardiovascular research funders
- making strategic investments to promote our EDI agenda
- putting in place an expression of interest process for independent reviewers of our grants and members of our funding committees.
View the report
