Researchers with passion and dedication
Australia’s outstanding international record in health and medical research is due to many factors. First and foremost among them is the dedication and passion of the people who carry out the research, people like those profiled on these pages.
The projects these researchers work on would not take place without support from the Australian Government through its investment in health and medical research. This investment is administered by NHMRC.
Australian researchers changing the world
- Improving mental health
- Combatting cancer
- Thinking of the children
- Working with Indigenous communities
Health and medical research benefits all Australians
Australians look to health and medical researchers for a number of reasons. They want us to find better ways to prevent ill health. They want us to find better ways to diagnose and treat the diseases they get. They want breakthroughs.
Despite the spectacular progress in human health that has come from research – the average Australian lifespan has increased by 20 years over the past century – we are yet to close the gap in Indigenous health and increase life expectancy to the same level as other Australians.
Progress has been made in most areas of ill health, notably cancer, cardiovascular disease and injury, but there is much left to do. Community interest in research continues unabated, as emonstrated every day by the work of volunteers and charities to raise money to support researchers in finding cures and treatments for such diseases as breast cancer and multiple sclerosis.
About 8,000 Australians, most under the age of 45, are employed on grants from NHMRC. Other outstanding researchers employed by others – universities, institutes, hospitals and other health services – have their research supported by NHMRC.
A moment’s reflection will tell us that a first class research workforce benefits Australia in many ways. The most important benefi ts to health come from the long-term investment in research that governments make through bodies such as NHMRC in Australia and our equivalent bodies – the National Institutes of Health in the US and the Medical Research Council in the UK.
More immediate benefits from health research come from the translation of research findings into the health system, or ‘knowledge transfer’ through the development and implementation of clinical practice guidelines, which ensure practitioners change their practices to reflect up-to-date findings.
Research may not always make the provision of good healthcare cheaper, but it can certainly make our spending on health more cost effective.
The future is exciting and challenging! Good quality research expands the horizon in healthcare, it shows what has and has not worked in the past and offers hope for a better future. Without good quality research, we will be stuck with current inadequate preventative measures and treatments and we won’t know how to improve the health of all Australians.
Professor Warwick Anderson
NHMRC CEO