Maintaining independence from industry funding
Oxford Population Health aims to address important health questions which can sometimes require very large studies to produce reliable findings. In the case of common life-threatening illnesses (such as heart disease, stroke and cancer), even small advances in prevention and treatment can help to avoid thousands of premature deaths and much disability worldwide.
The conduct of clinical trials that involve many thousands of participants, often in multiple countries around the world, requires a substantial research effort and can be very expensive. Given the costs involved, industry funding and provision of study drugs help to ensure that clinical trials can be of sufficient size and scope to assess the safety and efficacy of treatments reliably. Likewise, large-scale observational studies of the associations of risk factors with disease may well require substantial investment in genetic and other assays by industry in order to unlock scientifically important data for population health research.
Oxford Population Health staff decide what studies in which to be involved for scientific reasons and then seek government, charity and/or industry research funding to cover the costs. For example, the department's researchers have taken a lead in clarifying the relevance of cholesterol to the risk of cardiovascular disease, and then assessing the impact of lowering cholesterol levels with statin therapy. In the case of the Heart Protection Study, it took several years to obtain the funding, with half coming from the Medical Research Council (government) and the British Heart Foundation (charity), one quarter from Merck (manufacturer of simvastatin) and one quarter from Roche (manufacturer of vitamins E, C and beta-carotene). That trial showed statin therapy reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes safely for a wide range of patients at high risk of such events, but the vitamins produced no benefit. Both results were reported prominently by researchers independently of all of the funders.
All of the department's research that receives industry funding is governed by University of Oxford contracts which protect the independence of study design, conduct, analysis, interpretation and reporting. Oxford Population Health (not the funders) controls the databases, and controls the analyses and interpretation of its studies, with no restrictions from funders on what is reported.
The department does not engage in activities that pose or appear to pose a conflict of interest. In particular, Oxford Population Health would not accept funding for research from tobacco or alcohol companies, and has carefully limited engagement with food and nutrition companies.