Setting research priorities for global respiratory medicine within the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Global Health Research Unit in Respiratory Health (RESPIRE)

The NIHR Global Health Research Unit in Respiratory Health (henceforth ‘RESPIRE’) is a research and academic capacity development initiative funded by the UK Government through its National Institute of Health Research (NIHR). RESPIRE’s focus is to undertake applied respiratory health in both communicable and non-communicable disorders, which has the potential to improve the respiratory health of children and adults in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and Pakistan [1]. RESPIRE’s working ethos is to work bottom-up to undertake research priorities that have been identified by RESPIRE investigators in our partner low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) [1]. To this end, we conducted an internal process of identifying research priorities within the RESPIRE collaboration using the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative's (CHNRI) method [2]. The outcomes of this process were then used, in conjunction with other approaches, to develop the list of the research projects led by RESPIRE investigators that would receive financial support from the RESPIRE budget [2].