The Contribution of Medical Research Funding by Charities to the UK Economy

Third sector medical research plays an important role both in the UK economy and in society.  Medical research makes huge contributions to society through developing new treatments, improving existing ones and advancing technologies that can help save lives such as vaccines that help to fight against infectious diseases such as Covid-19.  Charities are major funders of medical research in the UK. Medical research funding by charities has been estimated to be 14% of all public funding of medical research in the UK, providing £1.2bn in2018.  Without charity funding, the U KGovernment and public bodies would need to increase their direct funding1 of health-related research by 85% to cover the shortfall. Our findings in the accompanying report show that whilst medical research has grown substantially since 2014, medical research funding by charities fell in 2020.