The UK Armed Forces community—serving personnel, veterans, and their families—faces unique health and employment challenges that existing research has failed to adequately capture due to fragmented data and limited access to participants. This project addresses a critical gap: despite rising defence spending and a shifting geopolitical landscape, researchers lack the joined-up data infrastructure needed to understand how military service affects long-term health, wellbeing, and career outcomes. Specific groups, including ethnic minorities, women, and early service leavers, remain particularly understudied. Over ten months, the team will build a cross-sector community spanning government, charities, academia, and people with lived experience. They will map available datasets, identify opportunities to link them, review existing policies, and hold workshops to prioritise the most pressing research questions. The final output is a detailed proposal for a larger research programme. If successful, this groundwork could transform how the UK studies military health. Better data linkage would allow researchers to track outcomes across a service member’s lifetime, enabling evidence-based policies on healthcare, transition support, and employment—helping the government fulfil its Armed Forces Covenant commitments.
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Background: UK Armed Forces (AF) members face unique occupational exposures and transition challenges that can adversely affect their health, wellbeing and employment outcomes. Research in this area has been constrained by limited access to serving personnel, fragmented data sources, small sample sizes, and underrepresentation of specific sub-groups, including ethnic minorities, women, and early service leavers. Addressing these limitations is increasingly urgent in light of rising UK defence spending and a rapidly evolving geopolitical context. Concurrently, recent advancements in data legislation, infrastructure, and analytical methodologies present a timely opportunity to enhance understanding of AF-related health and occupational outcomes. Strengthening the research and data infrastructure is critical for the UK Government to fulfil the commitments of the Armed Forces Covenant and develop more effective, evidence-informed policies and interventions for the AF community. Research Question: How can existing and emerging data infrastructures, research networks, and lived experience be leveraged to improve our understanding of the health, wellbeing and occupational outcomes of current, former, and future UK AF members? Objectives: This development award aims to establish a foundation for a future research programme to strengthen the evidence base on AF health and work outcomes. Objectives include: (1) build a community across Government, third sector, public bodies, lived experience leads and academia to identify emerging and ongoing challenges; (2) review and map relevant quantitative datasets, exploring harmonisation and data linkage opportunities; (3) conduct a scoping review of relevant policies and interventions; (4) hold stakeholder workshops to prioritise research questions to be taken forward and (5) develop a Stage 2 NIHR Health and Work Research proposal. Methods: The project will be delivered through five interlinked work packages. WP1 will include sandpit events with a cross-sector stakeholder community to identify key challenges in AF research. WP2 will map and assess quantitative datasets with potential for linkage and longitudinal follow-up. WP3 will deliver a scoping review of national policies and interventions affecting the AF, identifying gaps and implementation barriers. WP4 will convene a structured prioritisation workshop with stakeholders and lived experience leads to identify feasible, high-impact research questions. These activities will inform WP5, the development of a Stage 2 NIHR Health and Work Research Award proposal. A well-established PPIE infrastructure, including groups representing injured personnel, women veterans, and broader AF communities, will inform all objectives, contributing insights on emerging issues (RO1), relevant policies (RO3), and research priorities (RO4–5). Project Timeline: The project will run from September 2025 to June 2026. Stakeholder engagement and data mapping will take place in the first six months, followed by policy review and prioritisation in months 6 to 8. The final two months will focus on proposal development and dissemination planning. Knowledge Mobilisation, Dissemination and Impact: Outputs will include peer-reviewed publications, policy briefings, reports tailored to government, NHS, academic, and third-sector audiences, as well as a Stage 2 funding proposal. This project will allow researchers to harness existing data infrastructure and equip service providers to more effectively address the health, wellbeing, and occupational needs of the UK AF community.
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