Marie Curie Announces New £500,000 ‘Care Close To Home’ Research Fund

Marie Curie, the UK’s leading end of life charity, is today announcing funding to support research into improving palliative and end of life care in the community, including out-of-hours provision. The fund comes at a time when national health policy is increasingly focused on moving care out of hospital and into the community, with a growing emphasis on supporting more people to receive end of life care in the place they call home.

The charity’s new research grants scheme, themed ‘Care close to home, in and out of hours’ will fund projects of up to £150,000. Expressions of interest will open from 2 June 2026 until 17 July.

The call responds directly to gaps in evidence and priority research questions identified by patients, carers and health and social care professionals through the Palliative and End of Life Care Priority Setting Partnership (PeolcPSP), conducted with the NIHR James Lind Alliance and published in February 20251.
In particular, the funding aligns with the priority ‘What are the best ways to provide palliative and end of life care in the community, for example, what are the roles of different services and professions?’

Dr Sabine Best, Associate Director, Research Management and Impact at Marie Curie, said: “This funding comes at a critical time. More people are now dying in the community than ever before, with 28% of deaths in England and Wales occurring at home. However, access to timely, coordinated care outside of hospital settings, particularly out of hours, remains inconsistent.”

Research funded through this call may explore a range of topics, including the provision of community-based palliative care, models of service delivery, inequalities in access to round-the-clock care, and the economic evaluation of different care models. All projects will be required to meaningfully involve people with lived experience in their design and delivery and focus on short to medium term impact on practice or system change.

Through this research grants scheme, Marie Curie aims to generate robust evidence to support scalable improvements in how palliative and end of life care is delivered close to home, both in and out of hours, so that more people can receive high-quality, coordinated care where and when they need it most.

Marie Curie supports people with any illness they are likely to die from including Alzheimer’s (and other forms of dementia), heart, liver, kidney and lung disease, motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s, and advanced cancer, and is the largest charity funder of palliative and end of life care research in the UK.

To submit an expression of interest, email research.grants@mariecurie.org.uk by 5pm on 17 July 2026. For guidance on writing an expression of interest, visit mariecurie.org.uk/research-and-policy/research/calls-for-research