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Steering Group: 

The EViR Steering Group is composed of a diverse representation of the EViR membership including the organisation which hosts the EViR meetings. The purpose of the EViR Steering Group is to consider strategic and major operational issues for the Funders’ Forum.  

Steering Group Membership  

  • The EViR Steering Group will approve new members for the EViR Steering Group.   
  • Steering Group membership will be a term of three years with the possibility of renewing once.  
  • The Steering Group membership of EViR meetings hosting organisations will be held for a year. 

Chair of the Steering Group

The Chair , as head of the Steering Group, plays a key role in supporting the Secretariat and the Steering Group, and provides direction when a decision is required at short notice. The Chair is nominated from the Steering Group or by the Steering Group.

View Steering Group Terms of Reference here.

EViR Steering Group Members: 

HCRW, Wales (UK), EViR Steering Group Chair

Michael Bowdery

Head of Programmes with Health and Care Research Wales and the Welsh Government’s Health and Social Services Research and Development Division.

His responsibilities include cross-funder partnership working; facilitation and management of Welsh involvement in UK programmes; and overall management of the Health and Care Research Wales grant schemes and research development infrastructure.

Michael has seven years of active research experience as a behavioural psychologist in the School of Psychology, Bangor University, and has worked with children with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour in care, play and educational settings.

Prior to joining Research and Development Division, Michael worked as a Media Officer in the Office of the Chief Medical Officer, with responsibility for both media relations and the management of the Chief Medical Officer’s website. He also has experience of crisis management, through secondments to the Welsh Government’s Agriculture Department and Foot and Mouth Inquiries Team.

HRB, Ireland

Anne Cody

Head of Investigator-led Grants, Research Careers and Enablers Health Research Board

Anne PhD, MSc Bus Practice has a background in cell biology and spent ten years as a researcher in Germany and Ireland. She has been working with the Health Research Board in a variety of roles for 20 years. During this time, she has gained experience across a wide spectrum of health research and funding instruments from infrastructures over health research careers to knowledge translation awards and worked with many co-funders.

Anne is currently responsible for the HRB’s Investigator-led Grants, Research Careers and Enablers. She has been the driver behind the HRB’s systems approach to Public, Patient and Carer Involvement (PPI). She has been actively involved in tackling unconscious bias, has initiated transparency initiatives and has led a self-audit assessing the HRB’s performance against recommendations to maximising research value. This has led her together with Kelly Dunham from PCORI to develop a self-assessment tool specifically directed at funders, which is available to EViR member organisations.

ZonMw, The Netherlands

Barbara van der Linden

Barbara MD, PhD has worked at the Netherlands Health Research Funder ZonMw since 2004, first as an implementation officer for long term care and since 2008 as staff member Implementation and Innovation.

She is responsible for ZonMw’s implementation policies and leads the ZonMw implementation team. She has written reports on cost saving interventions, Choosing Wisely, and Strengthening Impact and publications on implementation and innovation in research. In 2017 she became co-convener of the international Ensuring Value in Research (EViR) Health Funders Forum on behalf of ZonMw. She leads the EViR working group on Dissemination and Implementation. Barbara is one of the initiators of the Netherlands Implementation Collective (NIC).

NIHR, United Kingdom

Dottie Goble

Dottie is an Assistant Director for the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR UK) Journals Library, with oversight on publications across the Health Technology Assessment and Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation programmes.

She has a key role in ensuring transparency and open research across the NIHR, leading the development of the Clinical Trial registration and dissemination of results and is currently implementing data sharing mechanisms across the NIHR. Before working with the NIHR, she had 15 years’ experience in local government policy development and community engagement.

former co-convenor, USA

Kelly Dunham

Senior Manager, Strategic Initiatives at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). In this role, she manages the operational aspects of the Science portfolio to meet PCORI’s strategic goals, including research strategy, portfolio development, and portfolio synthesis and communication.

As part of PCORI’s efforts to maximize the impact of research, she represents the organization in the Ensuring Value in Research (EViR) Funders’ Forum, a collaborative effort with other US and international funders to improve efficiency in biomedical research. Dunham received a BA in anthropology from Indiana University and an MPP from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

Forte, Sweden

Staffan Arvidsson

Staffan is a Senior Research Officer at Forte, the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare. Staffan has nearly twenty years of experience within research funding organizations.

Currently, Staffan is the Program Manager for Forte´s National Program on Implementation Research and the vice Program Manager for Forte´s National Program on “Applied Welfare Research”, which specifically targets the social care services. Staffan is also one of Sweden´s experts in the Health Cluster of Horizon Europe and he leads the work in Sweden with the partnership programme “Transforming Health and Care Systems”.

Support and arrangements

The Steering Group is supported by the EViR Secretariat which is accountable to the Steering Group.

EViR Secretariat

The Secretariat is located at the School of Health Enterprise and Innovation, University of Southampton, UK. The Secretariat oversees and provides support to the Forums’ activities, and is accountable to the Steering Group.

EViR Secretariat members:

Cristina Lujan Barroso
EViR Funders’ Forum Secretariat Lead
School of Healthcare Enterprise & Innovation
University of Southampton

Kathy Drust
Personal Assistant
School of Healthcare Enterprise & Innovation
University of Southampton
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