Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much the Department has spent on dental research in each of the last three years.

The Department invests over £1.6 billion each year on research through its research delivery arm, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).  Between the 2022/23 and 2024/25 financial years, the NIHR directly spent £18.2 million on research projects and programmes on dentistry research. The following table shows the spend on dentistry research, to the nearest £100,000, from 2022/23 to 2024/25 and in total over that period:

The Department, through the NIHR, also funds clinical academic training for doctors and dentists through the Integrated Academic Training Programme. This includes Academic Clinical Fellowships (ACFs) at the pre-doctoral level and Clinical Lectureships (CLs) at the post-doctoral level. From 2022 to 2024, 53 ACFs and 15 CLs were recruited in dentistry, with an estimated total value of over £14 million across the duration of the awards.

In addition, investments in NIHR infrastructure, not included in the figures above, support the country’s leading experts to develop and deliver high-quality translational, clinical, and applied research that is funded by the NIHR’s research programmes, other public funders of research, charities, and the life sciences industry. This has supported the delivery of over 50 studies and the recruitment of over 12,000 participants in research under the specialty area of oral and dental health in the last three financial years.

The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including dental research. These applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money, and scientific quality.