The School has established and emerging research strengths that have begun to build significant momentum. While the School has strong researchers in several areas of population health, there are currently four major areas in which the School can now identify substantial research strengths. In these areas particularly, we are seeing the beginnings of effective critical mass of researchers and research students:
Behaviour and Health Outcomes: The School has significant strengths in studies that examine how behavioural risk factors for chronic disease (particularly tobacco and alcohol use, food choices and physical activity) are being pursued. Research in this area is focussed on the prevention of diabetes, heart disease and the major cancers through understanding the social and environmental determinants of health risk and the development interventions to influence these behaviours in whole populations and disadvantaged groups. The School holds, through the Cancer Prevention Research Centre, large, five-year NHMRC Program and Capacity-Building grants on complementary aspects of Physical Activity and Population Health. The School is particularly concerned with developing a strong science base for chronic disease prevention, within a population health framework.
Research on Global Health: This is a new and rapidly developing strength of the School that includes a study of the factors contributing to the Burden of Disease globally and in a range of developed and developing countries; the development of evidence based intervention packages to influence the burden of disease; and, understanding health system performance in relation to addressing major causes of premature death and disability in populations. Substantial national and international competitive research grants ( US National Institutes of Health funding and a Wellcome/NHMRC International Collaborative Research Grant ) support this research. It includes the development of new methods for epidemiological and economic modelling and the integration of health economics into a broader framework focussed on global and national determinants of health outcomes.
Health Services Research: This area is now well consolidated in the School. It includes a strong health economics focus, addressing cost-effectiveness issues in health service delivery and in preventive strategies for public health; it also addresses priority setting in health care. A substantial Health Services Research Grant from the NHMRC supports this research. Together with research on global health, health services research in the School now has a strong focus on mental health. Depression is now widely understood to be a major population health problem for Australia and a number of other countries in the coming decades; understanding how preventive strategies and more effective approaches to management may be addressed, is emerging as a significant strength of the School.
Longitudinal Studies: Studies of children and families (the Mater-University Study of Pregnancy, and Determinants of Women’s Health Outcomes, The Australian Longitudinal Study of Women’s Health) and other longitudinal studies in which members of staff are involved including the National Diabetes Cohort (AusDiab) study now provide a major focus for research with large longitudinal data sets. With these resources and the focus on longitudinal studies, the School has also developed significant strengths in methodologies for longitudinal studies. This includes a National Health and Medical Research Council Capacity Building Grant to develop skills in longitudinal methods among early career researchers and to develop and extend our network of researchers in this area.
