Public Health Research Advisory Group

Background:

PHRAG was originally constituted by the 1997 Board to provide a specific resource to deal with public health research issues in the absence of a research SIG. The group is dynamic in that it convenes periodically to achieve certain goals within delineated timeframes. Members are coopted according to nominated objectives.

The first inception of PHRAG ran from 1997 until 2000. It was then reconvened in 2001, and continued until 2004. In both periods PHRAG had considerable achievements and the Terms of Reference remained substantially unchanged.

Vice President (Policy) Jane Freemantle has re-established PHRAG. It is the intention of the newly reconstituted PHRAG to develop new Terms of Reference. These will be placed on this webpage once they have been endorsed by the Board.

Membership

The current membership of PHRAG is:

• Dr Jane Freemantle (Chair)
• Professor Stephen Leeder
• Associate Professor Peter Sainsbury
• Dr Liz Hanna
• Ms Pieta Laut (ex-officio)

The membership of PHRAG will be developed as is appropriate to the projects it undertakes, but will include both senior and more junior members of the public health research fraternity. Invitations to join PHRAG will be extended to nominated research-active younger Fellows of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine and to a head of an academic Public Health Institution

Workplan

The proposed workplan for PHRAG in the immediate future is:

• To finalise the Terms of Reference
• To advocate for increased public health research.
• To encourage more people to engage in public health research
• To encourage an increase in the membership of public health researchers in PHAA
• To identify strategies to develop a mentoring program especially to support new researchers seeking grants for public health research using experienced researchers workers.
• To develop a workshop focusing on increasing public health research to be held at the 2007 Annual Conference being held in Alice Springs.

NHMRC - National Health and Medical Research Council

New Code of Practice for the Responsible Conduct of Research - 2007 - NHMRC (PDF)

Link to the NHMRC website for statistics on funding

Related Documents

PHAA Background paper (PDF)

Directory of Grants and Fellowships in the Global Health Sciences (PDF)