Help DEBRA decide what research we fund
Each year, EB researchers from around the world apply to DEBRA for funding for their research projects. Experts from clinical and research fields review these applications and advise the DEBRA Board of Trustees on which of these projects would represent the best use of our money for fulfilling our research goals for the EB community. Alongside this, we ask our members to also review the research projects as experts-by-experience, and offer their own feedback as to which of these projects they would like DEBRA to fund, based on their lived experience of EB.
If you’re a member who would like to help us decide what research we fund in 2026, please come along to one of two Zoom meetings in April 2026 where we’ll explain how our members can review the research applications we’ve received in this year.
If you’ve reviewed for us before and are familiar with the process, we’d still love to see you and it would be helpful if you could share any tips for members new to the process.
If you can’t join one of the meetings you can still take part! Simply sign up here and we’ll send everything you need.
If you are interested but don’t have time to review our research applications in 2026, why not sign up to the Involvement Network, and tell us you’re interested in hearing about opportunities to get involved in research.
Your voice matters, get involved today.
Every year we will let our members know via email when and how they can take part in reviewing our grant applications. You will need to be a DEBRA member. If you are not yet a member, please see whether you are eligible to become one.
To kick things off you can join one of the two meetings taking place to talk you through the process of reviewing the research grants. After those sessions you will receive links to the plain language sections of the application by email from the DEBRA team. We will asked you to read the summary, provide a score to indicate how strongly you feel that the research is worth funding, and leave any positive or negative comments for us to consider.
If you’d like to be involved without attending a session, please let us know.
The number of applications varies each year, but we estimate that reviewing each one should take no longer than 15 minutes. You are free to review all the applications we send you or pick and choose which ones you’d like to review before the review period ends. There is no pressure to complete even one if you decide that this involvement opportunity is not for you.
We will hold an online meeting to discuss the process for reviewing the applications. This is an hour-long meeting with members of the research and membership teams, and fellow DEBRA members. We will repeat it every year.
Absolutely not. We ask the applicants for our funding to explain their research for people without a scientific background in the sections of the application that we will ask you to review. You are an EB expert by experience, and your review is separate and in addition to the reviews we receive from scientific experts.
Yes. We carry out the whole process online.
Yes. You can email a member of the DEBRA team with any questions about the review process.
We do not provide any financial payment to our experts by experience or scientific experts for reviewing the applications for our research funding. We are very grateful to those who contribute their time and expertise. The benefits to you are through improving our ability to fund research that is relevant to our members, and access to the research proposals that may be interesting to read.
Your comments (but not scores) will be sent to the applicant so they can address any issues you raise. It is great to give positive feedback as well as highlight areas where the research project isn’t clearly explained or you feel it could be improved to be more relevant to people living with EB.
Your scores, comments, and the applicants’ responses to them will be made available to our Scientific Grants Advisory Panel alongside the scores, comments and applicant responses to reviews by scientific and clinical experts in appropriate research fields.
Our Charitable Purposes Committee will recommend applications for funding based on consideration of reviews and scores from members as experts by experience and scientific experts. Their recommendations will be presented to the trustees of DEBRA UK for a final decision as part of our research review process.