Study partners

The PROTECT study is led by the Health and Safety Executive’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Andrew Curran, and delivered by a collaboration of 19 government, regulatory and academic institutions across the UK. Current and past contributors include:

• Animal and Plant Health Agency
• Defence Science and Technology Laboratory
• Health and Safety Executive
• Imperial College London
• Institute of Occupational Medicine
• London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• Newcastle University
• Thomas Ashton Institute for Risk and Regulatory Research
• UK Health Security Agency
• University College London
• University of Aberdeen
• University of Bristol
• University of Cambridge
• University of Hertfordshire
• University of Leeds
• University of Leicester
• University of Loughborough
• University of Manchester
• University of Sheffield
• University of Strathclyde
• University of Warwick
• University of the West of Scotland

PROTECT is one of six COVID-19 National Core Studies (NCS) funded by HM Treasury, having been allocated almost £16 million to date (£2 million for 2020-21, £14 million for 2021-22). The NCS programme is coordinated by the Government Office for Science. The other NCS are:

• Clinical Trials Infrastructure: building on established National Institute for Health Research infrastructure to accelerate delivery of large-scale trials for COVID-19 drugs and vaccines (led by Patrick Chinnery, Clinical Director, Medical Research Council and Divya Chadha Manek, Head of Business Development, Vaccines Task Force).
• Data and Connectivity: making data from all studies available and accessible to inform decision makers and catalyse COVID-19 research (led by Andrew Morris, Director, Health Data Research UK).
• Epidemiology and Surveillance: collecting data to inform levels of restrictions and protection against imminent outbreaks (led by Ian Diamond, UK National Statistician, Office for National Statistics).
• Immunity: understanding immunity against COVID-19 to inform back-to-work policies (led by Paul Moss, Professor of Haematology, University of Birmingham).
• Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing: using data from longitudinal studies to address the impact of COVID-19 and associated control measures on health and wealth to inform mitigating strategies (led by Nishi Chaturvedi, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, University College London).