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WAHTN, along with Australia’s other nine Research Translation Centres, under the auspices of the Australian Health Research Alliance, have come together to address priority areas for women and girls across physical and mental health and to support career advancement for women in health and medical research.

A Women’s Health Research, Translation and Impact Network (WHRTN) has been formed which has received funding of $5 million over five years from the Morrison Government, the Hon Greg Hunt MP and the Medical Research Future Fund.

This national collaboration across community, health services and academic institutions will boost national and international collaboration on women’s health, build health workforce capacity, develop leaders in women’s health, and advance research and translation to deliver impact and better health for Australian women.

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The Chief Allied Health Office of the WA Department of Health has partnered with the WA Health Translation Network this year, via two initiatives to progress early stage research and provide clinicians with time for research development. The combined value of $236,979 for these two initiatives is being delivered through the Allied Health Enabling Platform.

Congratulations to the following recipients of the 2019/20 Allied Health Early Stage Funding Grants (total grant value $128,979):

The University of Melbourne is calling for nominations for the award of The Sir William Upjohn Medal. The Sir William Upjohn Medal is awarded by the University of Melbourne in commemoration of Sir William George Dismore Upjohn (1888-1979) and is available for award every five years.

In awarding this Medal the University aims to recognise an individual’s distinguished services to medicine in Australia: services such as national leadership or reform of medical processes, systems or programs, or a seminal medical discovery, that have made a widespread impact on the Australian population by improving or protecting the health of the Australian people.

Please see the University of Melbourne’s website for more information or to make a nomination.

Nominations close: 16 October 2020.

Applications are now open for two unique Perth Biodesign programs, allowing aspiring biomedical innovators to take a hands-on, design-thinking approach to healthcare innovation.

Perth Biodesign for Medtech

Perth Biodesign for Medtech is a 6 month, part-time course running annually, in which multidisciplinary teams identify unmet clinical needs and work towards inventing a medical technology solution, whilst learning about the medical device development process.

Teams come together once a week, usually on a Wednesday evening, to learn, and put into practice, the course content delivered by course faculty and top local experts. Throughout the course, teams will have regular deliverables that will require further work outside of the weekly meetings, either online or at in-person team meetings. Previous participants estimate the workload of the course at around 8 hours per week.

Learn more and apply

Biodesign Bootcamp

Biodesign bootcamps are an accelerated two full-days of learning and applying the Biodesign methodology for those wanting to learn how to identify and validate clinical unmet needs, ideate a viable solution and translate the innovation within a complex healthcare environment.

Biodesign bootcamps are an excellent option for entrepreneurs, innovation staff and senior academics, clinicians or executives interested in the healthcare space, who cannot commit the time to completing the full Biodesign Medtech or Digital Health courses.

Learn more and register

Applications are now open for Abstract Submissions for the 13th Annual Raine Study ASM for 2020.

This years event will be hosted virtually on Friday 30 October. Abstract Submissions are to be submitted by Friday, 25 September 2020 using the Abstract Submission Form on the Raine Study website.

Once again the Raine Medical Research Foundation have kindly donated two $750 prizes for the best presentations by early career researchers and students.

For more information please visit the Raine Study website.

Over one million Australian children live with serious respiratory conditions. This is why the new Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre is working to create healthy lungs for every child, for life.

Launched this week by WA Health Minister Hon Roger Cook MLA, the Centre is a powerhouse partnership between Telethon Kids, Perth Children’s Hospital Foundation and Perth Children’s Hospital. As a leader of paediatric respiratory research in Australia, it will contribute significantly to global efforts to improve the lives of children with respiratory conditions and their families.

The Centre’s researchers are spearheading the development of therapies that would function like an asthma vaccine, training the immune system and protecting the lining of the airways to prevent the development of childhood asthma.

Other priority projects for the Centre in the next five years include:

• The use of ‘lung on a chip’ technology to accelerate drug discovery
• Overcoming respiratory ‘superbug’ infections using naturally-occurring viruses
• Improving the poorer lung function outcomes of babies born prematurely
• The identification of key factors during pregnancy that predispose children to lung disease
• A radical re-design of clinical trials to bring medicines to kids quicker
• Narrowing the significant Indigenous respiratory health gap

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The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is aware that all researchers and support staff continue to be affected, to varying degrees, by the COVID-19 pandemic. These effects include interruptions to research activities, increased workloads for front-line health care workers and public health researchers and increased caring responsibilities, particularly for those based in Victoria.

The following changes have been made in response to these impacts.

In consultation with Research Committee, NHMRC has adjusted dates for the 2021 grant program:

• to provide applicants with as much time as possible to plan and prepare applications for the next round of funding, and
• to avoid scheduling clashes as a result of delays to the Ideas Grant and Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies (CTCS) Grant schemes in 2020.

The revised 2021 schedule aims to:

• minimise disruption by only making essential changes
• avoid the scheduling clashes caused by delays to the 2020 Ideas and CTCS Grant rounds
• wherever possible, limit overlap with national school holidays, the Christmas/New Year break and traditional conference periods, and
• harmonise key dates with the Australian Research Council 2021 schedule to spread the load on RAOs and applicants to both agencies.

*Exact dates will be finalised later this year in consultation with RAOs and the ARC

The 2020 CTCS Grant round was delayed for 7 months to accommodate the impact of COVID-19 on researchers involved in the clinical and public health response to the pandemic. The revised schedule should ensure that applicants know the outcomes of the 2020 round before applications close for the 2021 round.

The delay to the 2021 Investigator Grant round means that outcomes of this round will not be known before applications close for the 2021 Ideas Grant round. Therefore, because of the capping rules, researchers who apply to both schemes will have their 2021 Ideas Grant application(s) removed from consideration if they are successful in obtaining a 2021 Investigator Grant. This situation is not ideal and NHMRC will seek to separate the two schemes in future years. In view of the continued lockdown in some regions, however, it is hoped that the delayed closing date for the 2021 Investigator Grant round (March 2021 instead of November 2020) will ensure that all those who wish to apply will have the opportunity to do so.

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The Health Services Research Association of Australia and New Zealand (HSRAANZ) awards and prizes program recognises individuals who have made significant contributions to the fields of health services and policy research in Australia and New Zealand. The following awards will be presented at the HSRAANZ 2020 end of year event and Annual General Meeting.

Best Health Services and Policy Research Papers

• Best overall paper
• Best paper by an Early Career Researcher (ECR)
• Best paper by a PhD Student

Health Services and Policy Research Impact Award

• This award recognises research that has had a significant impact on health and health care. The award is intended to identify and promote examples of outstanding research that has been successfully translated into health policy, management, or clinical practice.

The deadline for nominations for all 2020 awards is 31 August 2020.

More information and nomination process

An online knowledge hub for consumer and community involvement in healthcare and health and medical research is currently being developed. It will bring together all the consumer and community involvement resources, contacts and information you need – together in the one place.

The Australian Health Research Alliance (AHRA) is developing this online knowledge hub to further connect health professionals, researchers, managers, consumers and community members across Australia.

AHRA are asking Australian healthcare professionals, researchers, managers and consumers to share their information, resource and support needs for consumer and community involvement in a short 10-minute survey.

Your responses help AHRA to prioritise the resources and features to include within the online hub.

This work builds on the 2018 AHRA Australia-wide Audit recommendation that AHRA facilitates the sharing of existing consumer and community involvement resources and expertise.

For further information contact Sarah Carmody, Project Manager Consumer and Community Involvement, Monash Partners Academic Health Science Centre.

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is undertaking a research project to determine if there are appropriately clear and supported pathways available to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clinician researchers in Australia, and to develop a better understanding of the challenges they face. The findings of this research will be used to better support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clinician researchers in the future.

NHMRC have asked ORIMA Research, an independent research organisation, to conduct this research. For this project, ORIMA Research is looking to speak with:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clinician researchers – that is healthcare professionals that both conduct research and provide direct clinical services; and
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander medical students interested in a career as a clinician researcher.

The interviews will be conducted by telephone and will be about one hour in duration. They will be conducted from 20 July to 28 August 2020.

This project may benefit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clinician researchers from medical, nursing and allied health disciplines, and medical students planning a career in clinical research, in a number of ways. A strong clinician researcher workforce is vital to the translation of research into practice and effective research impact. NHMRC will continue to invest in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clinician researchers and to support the clinician researcher workforce through funding and the outcomes of this project.

If you are interested in participating in this research, or for more information, please contact Isabella Frances from ORIMA Research via email or phone: (03) 9526 9000.