The NIHR Diet and Activity Research Translation (DART) Collaboration brings together experts in health behaviours. We specialise in diet and nutrition, sleep, sedentary behaviour and physical activity, lifecourse and ageing, obesity and weight management.
These behaviours are important because they impact all the major long-term conditions challenging people and the NHS, including cancers, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
We work across NIHR Biomedical Research Centres with academics, health professionals, industry and other partners. We lead and promote high quality translational and experimental research across the country.
Our aim is to tackle challenges associated with health and address unmet research needs.
Our mission is to create a collective voice for the academic and clinical community, with industry, charities and other stakeholders. Our work is not limited to one disease and focusses on the behaviours that impact many.
Together by investigating these health-related behaviours and creating interventions that are clinically needed, we maximise the impact of research.
Our expertise and capabilities
Our expertise includes:
- Commercial and clinical trials (and platform studies)
- Interventional and observational studies
- Epidemiology and population science
We have centres that focus on:
- Appetite control
- Cancer
- Cardiometabolic disease
- Children and young people
- Disease prevention
- Gastrointestinal health
- Nutrition in later life
- Obesity
- Phenotyping/Genotyping
- Diet and physical activity
- Pre-conception and pregnancy
Our work is developed and delivered with our partner NIHR Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs) (please see below). We work closely with other NIHR funded facilities, such as Patient Recruitment Centres (PRCs) and Clinical Research Facilities (CRFs).
Bringing together these NIHR infrastructure elements under one partnership, it is greater than the sum of its parts. Together with partners in the life sciences industry, charity sector and other third parties, we aim to deliver high quality, collaborative research proposals, research tools/resources, and capacity development training.
Who we are
Our academic and research leads span our specialities of sedentary behaviour and physical activity, diet and nutrition, life course and ageing, obesity and weight management.
Our members are leading researchers based in the NIHR’s BRCs, chaired by Professor Melanie Davies from the NIHR Leicester BRC, deputy chair Professor Keith Godfrey at NIHR Southampton BRC.
Our academic leads and related research themes:
- NIHR Bristol Biomedical Research Centre
Diet & Physical Activity – Professor Richard Martin, Professor Russ Jago and Professor Julian Hamilton-Shield - NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre
Nutrition, Obesity, Metabolism and Endocrinology – Professor Nita Forouhi and Dr Soren Brage - NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre
Digestive diseases, Metabolic and Endocrine – Professor Gary Frost - NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre
Lifestyle – Professor Melanie Davies, Professor Tom Yates and Professor David Stensel - NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre
Cancer prevention and early detection, Living with and beyond cancer – Professor Michelle Harvie - NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre
Metabolic experimental medicine – Professor Jeremy Tomlinson and Professor Susan Jebb - NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre
Preventing multimorbidities – Associate Professor Rachel Pechey - NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre
Nutrition, Lifestyle and Metabolism – Professor Keith Godfrey and Professor Philip Calder
Find out more about the NIHR Leicester BRC’s other partnerships and collaborations here.
Please get in touch with the DART using the form below.