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Key Activities

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Our main activities are:

1. addressing rural health research needs: undertaking research

Partnerships between research centres and health service partners ensure our research focuses on health needs of rural Australians.

Every centre works to ensure their research agenda reflects local, area and State health priorities by consulting and interacting with their community, health services and NSW Health.

This process includes:

  • local health services taking part in management and consultative boards for each research centre
  • joint planning and development of Collaboration research projects
  • research centre and health service personnel serving on State and national policy-making boards and committees
  • research leaders with a role on District Health Boards

The Collaboration sponsors a biennial Rural Health Research Colloquium. It invites experienced and novice researchers to present their findings and develop collaborative networks.

The Collaboration has agreed procedures for identifying and developing Collaboration-supported projects including "Flagship" projects, such as the Australian Rural Mental Health Study (ARMHS), which involve all partners: http://www.crrmh.com.au/Current-Research/



2. building sustainable health research capacity in rural New South Wales: capacity-building

The Collaboration is committed to professional development and postgraduate academic development of rural health personnel by:

  • actively supporting postgraduate academic development of all research-active personnel attached to centres
  • providing research supervision and support to PhD students within the Collaboration
  • providing support to clinician researchers outside the Collaboration across rural New South Wales
  • attracting a variety of research project grants, including large competitive grants

We support research-active personnel by providing:

  • practical research supervision, skills development and leadership
  • salary subsidy/backfill for researchers to accelerate research, leading to higher academic qualifications
  • joint academic development programs, such as PhD "boot camps"
  • obtaining advanced methodological support as required

Our academic leaders also support clinicians in the Rural Research Capacity Building Program run by the Clinical Education and Training Institute, Rural Directorate http://www.ruralceti.health.nsw.gov.au/:

  • encouraging and assisting participants
  • teaching in skills development workshops and seminars
  • mentoring


3. translation of research into policy and practice: Influencing policy and practice

The translation of research into improved policy and practice is a priority.

Research centres and our partner health services work to ensure research outcomes contribute to measurable improvements in policy and practice.

The table below shows some of the strategies the Collaboration is pursuing to improve adoption of research findings.




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