About us

NIHR Health Protection Research Units (HPRUs) are partnerships between universities and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) in England. By delivering high-quality collaborative research, the HPRUs support UKHSA in its objective to protect the health of the public, enabling it to prepare for and respond to major or emerging health protection incidents, as well as building an evidence base for health protection policy and practice.

The aims of the HPRUs are to:

• create an environment where world class health protection research, focused on the needs of the public, can thrive.
• focus on priority areas which will have the greatest impact on public health protection.
• provide high quality research evidence to inform decision-making by public health professionals, policy makers, those involved in operational delivery and service users.
• enable translation of advances in health protection research into benefits for patients, service users and the public.
• increase capacity and capability to conduct high quality, multi-disciplinary health protection research and facilitate knowledge exchange and expertise across universities and UKHSA.
• provide a flexible staff capacity in the event of a major health protection incident and retain a level of responsive research capacity to address emerging health protection research requirements.
• contribute to addressing health inequalities through an increasing focus on underserved communities including relevant interventions, improving health outcomes in the health and care sector and for broader economic gain.

Each HPRU is a centre of excellence in multi-disciplinary health protection research in a distinct priority area. The latest round of funding includes:

• £11 million to an HPRU focused on antimicrobial resistance, where infections become harder to treat, which is one of the biggest public health threats globally.
• The HPRU in Climate Change and Health Security to tackle the health threats from climate change including infectious disease risks, flooding and extreme heat.
• The HPRU in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections focuses on emerging diseases that originate in wildlife such as mpox, which pose a significant threat to human health.
• The HPRU in Emergency Preparedness and Response focused on strengthening preparedness for major public health emergencies including pandemics and terrorism.
• Additional funding of £3 million is being made through two Health Protection Research Focus Awards on vaccines and immunisation and outbreak-related behaviours.

Partners

• National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)
• UK Health Security Agency
• The Health and Safety Executive

NIHR in HPRU in Chemical Threats and Hazards

The Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) in Chemical Threats and Hazards is a partnership between the University of Leicester, UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

Our vision is to use new methods and collaborative working to provide a major improvement in our ability to detect exposures to chemicals, metal and air pollution in our daily lives and monitor and predict how they affect our health.

Everyone is exposed to low levels of many chemicals in their daily lives, including pesticides, flame retardants and ‘forever chemicals’ (in non-stick pans and food packaging), also to metals such as lead. We also breathe in air pollutants including tiny fragments from brake and tyre wear and mould spores. For most of these exposures, we currently have limited understanding of how they affect health. As part of this HPRU we are:

• Developing new technologies to detect chemicals in emergency situations.
• Investigating whether environmental exposures affect the living organisms found in lungs, gut and skin that support good health. For example, initial work at the University of Leicester suggests air and chemical pollution can worsen bacterial infections in the lungs.
• Conducting large-scale health studies using patient and volunteer data. These help us to identify health impacts of chemicals and air pollution in the UK – and how other factors may worsen effects. For example, transport noise, higher temperatures and pollen levels, may worsen impacts of air pollution.
• Developing laboratory techniques to rapidly detect exposure to chemicals in the environment and through analysis of breath in people.
• Identifying ways a chemical can affect human cells, measuring thousands of samples at a time.
• Developing statistical and computing techniques, including artificial intelligence, will help us understand which chemicals, metals and environmental exposures may be causing us harm.

Our work will consider people from a range of different social and cultural backgrounds to see if this affects being exposed and also if it increases risks to health.