NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare Associated Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has provided funding to establish 13 Health Protection Research Units (HPRU) to address key public health threats. The HPRUs are partnerships between Universities and UK Health Security Agency forming multi-disciplinary centres of excellence with a focus on collaborations and knowledge sharing.

NIHR HPRU in Healthcare Associate Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance was established at University of Oxford in April 2014 and was renewed in April 2025 for a further 5 years. Key collaborators are the University of Bristol, the University of Leeds, and the University of Nottingham.

The HPRU Director at Oxford University is Professor Sarah Walker. Our vision is to find better ways to manage and prevent threats from antimicrobial resistance and healthcare-associated infections, by detecting them faster, working out who needs protecting most and how this can be done. It consists of 4 broad Research Themes:

(1)   Optimising Surveillance

(2)   Establishing Population Impact

(3)   Advancing Stewardship Approaches

(4)   Mitigating Gram-Negative Infections

To find our more information, please visit our HPRU website.