The International Alliance of Mental Health Research Funders

brain scan

RAND played a key role in the early years of the International Alliance of Mental Health Research Funders (formerly the Science of Science for Mental Health Initiative) supporting the Graham Boeckh Foundation to establish a 'think tank without borders' to undertake research and analysis into mental health research funding.

The Alliance has developed into a collaborative initiative focussed on greater knowledge exchange and collaboration within the sector with the main objective to increase the impact of mental health research funding.

In a sense, the global mental health research funding community is a nascent sector and the role of the Alliance is to help develop it. Since its beginning the Alliance membership has grown substantially to a diverse group of member organisations from around the world with a wealth of experience and knowledge in research funding.

RAND Projects Supported by the Alliance

  • Fish Schizophrene by Bryan Charnley

    Mental Health Retrosight Study Sheds Light on What Makes Biomedical Research More Likely to Benefit Patients

    The Mental Health Retrosight study of 20 years of research in the field of schizophrenia shows how research projects that successfully translated into patient benefit share certain characteristics, such as multidisciplinary researchers or teams, and clinically-oriented rather than basic research topics. These attributes could be selected for, promoted or nurtured to increase the impact of future research on improving patients’ lives.

  • Illustration of profile and visible brain with world planisphere

    Mapping the Global Mental Health Research Funding System

    To support the coordination of mental health research, RAND Europe mapped the research funding ‘ecosystem’. Researchers explored who the major funders are, what kinds of research they support, and how their strategies relate to one another.

  • Photo illustration of researcher and brain

    International Comparative Performance of Mental Health Research

    Scientific understanding of mental health and its neurobiological and psychosocial underpinnings has greatly increased in the last three decades. Yet, little is known about the landscape of this knowledge and how and where it is evolving. Through the Alliance for Mental Health Research, RAND Europe conducted a bibliometric assessment of mental health research (MHR) outputs from 1980 to 2011. The study demonstrated that bibliometrics can help highlight the potential drivers of variation in performance of MHR systems and provides an analytical basis for benchmarking MHR trends in the future.

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International Alliance for Mental Health Research Funders