 Welcome to this presentation from AFCRI. I'm Bob Wells, I'm the director of AFCRI and this session is to provide information around our call of applications for a third round of centres of research excellence. This presentation will give you some information about the background to AFCRI for those who might not be familiar with it. More information about our selection criteria, our processes and some information about support that we can offer. For example through the Pickered Liaison Officer Peter McGinnis who is based at AFCRI and also in the department can give more information about potential links with the Department of Health and Aging. So to begin proceedings I'll hand over to Rebecca Paolovicini, our business manager who will talk about the background to AFCRI. Thank you. Okay, thanks Bob and welcome everyone to this, which is our third information session about centres of research excellence. I know many people will probably know this information but we thought it would be useful to go through again the background to AFCRI so that you can understand where the centres of research excellence fit into our current program. AFCRI has been operational since 2003 as part of an initiative of the Australian Government. It was commenced as part of the Pickered Strategy, the primary healthcare research evaluation and development strategy. I always get that a bit wrong but anyway the Pickered Strategy and information on the Pickered Strategy can be found on their website as well. So there are three main goals of the institute. The first is to strengthen the knowledge base of primary healthcare by conducting and supporting research and developing an extended pool of primary healthcare researchers in Australia. The second is to facilitate the uptake of research evidence in primary healthcare policy and practice and to conduct research that is relevant for the development of practice and policy and to get that research evidence into policy. And Peter will talk more about that later, how we go about getting research evidence into policy. And the third overarching goal of the institute is to enhance research capacity in primary healthcare through strategic partnerships with both national and international groups. And the development of the centres of research excellence is really sort of one of the key aims is to focus on that research capacity building in the Australian setting. So we have developed links with Australian organisations, we've developed links with international organisations. We have partnerships, one of those partnerships and you can find more information about this is with an organisation in Washington called the Robert Graham Centre. And that's just an example of one partnership that we have developed at ANU, AFCRE ANU and the centres of research excellence that have been established already are developing partnerships with national and international organisations. And we're developing a network, what we're calling an AFCREAN network. Now this slide just shows the Pickwood strategy and how it all fits together up until the end of this year. So we've got the Department of Health and Aging and through the oversight of the department they have, they oversee the Pickwood strategy and I'll just remind you that this will be changing at the end of this year. But it is current as of today where we've had, well the department has had the RCBI through 26 university departments. AFCRE is funded through this strategy as is the primary healthcare research and information service Pickris which is based at Flinders University and your law probably have your raw profile and your e-bullet and from Pickris. And we work closely with Pickris and then there are two other components which are current as of today, the senior and mid-career fellowships and the NHMRC fellowships. Now as you know the RCBI component is changing as of 2012 and funding will go into further research, further centres of research excellence which is why we're here today. So the current contract that we're operating on from the Department of Health and Aging commenced in 2010, goes through to the end of 2014 with an extension for management of centres of research excellence. We have a focus for these years of this current contract and that will be to fund research that will contribute to the Australian Government and COEG's reform agenda. To build on research excellence through the generation of increasingly high quality robust evidence for Australian primary healthcare. To build on knowledge exchange expertise and activities and that comes back to translating knowledge into policy and Peter will talk more about that later how we do that because that is a sort of a major component of the work that we do. To continue to build primary healthcare research capacity in Australia and that is being done through a range of mechanisms and successful centres of research excellence do have an obligation to build research capacity and that is an area that will need to be addressed in your application for around three centre of research excellence. Our focus in this contract is building on multi-disciplinary research in primary healthcare and you can find more information on how we're doing that on our website. The current reform agenda is something that we are focusing on and a bit later in this presentation we'll be talking about our research themes. The research themes for this current round of centres of research excellence and the research themes that we are focusing on in this next round are looking at gaps where there are gaps in the current research that supports the reform agenda. The final dot point for our focus in this contract period is to provide evidence, knowledge and specialised expertise to inform decision making for primary healthcare systems and services and the systems and services is something that I'd just like to underline there. So we're focusing on excellence, developing research excellence in primary healthcare and Chelando will talk more a bit later about the themes that we're going to be focusing on and Bob will talk more about that but we're looking at informing the national primary healthcare strategy, a healthier future for all Australians, the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report. The primary healthcare reform in Australia and the national preventative healthcare strategy. Just a little bit on our governance which I think is quite important for people who are applying for not just centres of research excellence but for any other streams that we might be stream opportunities that we'll be advertising for in the future. We have a research advisory board which is an independent board, it's made up of members with a wide range of expertise in primary healthcare. I think we have most disciplines covered. We certainly have practice nursing, psychology, sports, physiology, general practice. Information on our board members is available on our website. Our research advisory board actually determines the research priorities for AFCRE and the whole of the AFCRE network. Members are chosen because of their skills and expertise and are actually approved by the minister and then appointed by the ANU. The board sets up expert review committees to look at applications for not just our centres of excellence but for our stream applications as well. Those expert review committees are chaired by a member of the board. We have independent national experts on those review committees and we always have an international expert on the committee as well. For the centres of research excellence we have two international experts that sit on our expert review committee. The role of AFCRE ANU is that our role is to implement that research agenda that the board sets and then to engage in knowledge exchange with key stakeholders including policymakers, politicians, researchers, healthcare providers and professional groups including non-government organisations, consumers. We have a range of networks with consumer organisations and we deal with the media. I won't read out this slide because it's basically just summarising in a diagrammatic sense what I've just spoken about, about how the board is established, research questions are set by the research advisory board and then that flows down to expert review committees and then back up to the board. I should just add that our expert review committee don't actually make the decisions. They make recommendations which then go back to the whole of the research advisory board to determine the outcome. Okay, now I'm going to hand back over to Bob who's going to talk about the research themes and the selection criteria for the round three centres of excellence. So the aims of the CREs and the research themes. First of all, the major research themes for the centres of excellence are three. First of all, access and equity. Secondly, prevention and management. And third, quality, governance, performance and sustainability. And these themes are drawn actually from the first Australian primary healthcare strategy. So they're not something we've made up ourselves. They're part of the strategy that the governments of Australia have endorsed. The research domains that we have are quite comprehensive. We have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. We have access to primary healthcare, adolescent and child health, chronic disease management, e-health, mental health, multidisciplinary teams, primary healthcare models and delivery, primary healthcare performance, practice nursing, preventive medicine, rural and remote primary healthcare, self-help organisations and workforce. So you can see we cover the field in terms of the areas of research interest for AFCREC. In terms of the centres of research excellence, the selection criteria. First of all, innovation and research approaches. Second, knowledge generation. Third, knowledge translation and possible implications for policy. And I'll elaborate more on that further on in relation to this round of CREs. Fourth, research capacity building which Rebecca has already touched on. And finally, collaboration and engagement with priority groups. So looking at those knowledge translation and possible implications for policy. Our interest is from AFCREC that the mandate we have through our funding agreement with the Department of Health and Aging is to undertake research that will support improving the system, the primary healthcare system, support the national health reform agenda and lead to better service delivery. So it's not directly a clinical research approach, it's to do with the system health services and policy issues. So what we're looking for in that particular criterion is the applicants understanding of the whole of system issues. So it's not just how GPs might function or how nurses might function in primary healthcare or that sort of thing. It's how all the bits perhaps come together. And we clearly feel that applicants should demonstrate their thinking around that by showing us what they see might be the policy and implementation matters that would be addressed in their research and what issues might turn up as their research progresses. And I'll talk a little bit more about that later. And we want to be able to demonstrate the potential benefit of research models that people might want to test as part of their CRE program for the population outcomes, for service outcomes at the population level, if not for the whole of Australia, but at least for population groupings within the broader population. And to demonstrate potential systems issues that might arise from the research model they would like to test, for example, is it a model that would be able to be funded within our current funding arrangements or would it require quite significant departures from how we traditionally have funded primary care in Australia? Issues of accountability, how would it fit into the new accountability structures with Medicare locals? The agreement put in the Commonwealth and the states to improve, if you like, closer integration between primary care and acute care? And how will the governance models that we have in place in the Australian system be affected? So for us they're very serious questions because having the perfect model on its own is not sufficient for that to be something that could be picked up and used as part of the reform process. So just a bit of background, we already have five CREs funded. From the results of the first round of CREs, we funded three which were announced in January 2011. These are CRE for Accessible and Equitable Primary Health Service provision in rural and remote Australia. CRE for Indigenous Primary Health Care Intervention in Chronic Diseases and a CRE for Building Quality, Governance, Performance and Sustainability in Primary Health Care through the Clinical Microsystems approach. The second round of CREs which were announced in September 2011, two CREs, first CRE for Prevention of Chronic Conditions in Rural and Remote High Risk Populations and second a CRE in Urban Aboriginal Child Health. So I'll now ask Chelandu Makuka, who's our research manager in AFCRE. She will take us through the application process. Thank you, Robert. I will now take you through the round three application process. And in round three, we expect to find around about five centers of research excellence. And to mention that the Research Advisory Board reserves the right to fund any centers or may fund less than five if the applications are not of good quality. So that subject to the outcome of the assessment process, AFCRE may call for fresh proposals in the high priority areas as what happened in this case, where the Board has drawn attention to about seven research themes. And these are finance and economics of primary health care, Medicare locus, oral health care, primary health care workforce, child and adolescent health care, alcohol abuse and associated conditions, overweight and obesity. So if we go into a little bit more detail into some of the issues to be considered for research around these themes, for instance, in finance and economics of primary health care, we could look at policy implications of financial incentives, for instance, to providing quality primary health care and other mechanisms of providing cost effective primary health care. These days we're talking about the efficient price of primary health care. When we look at Medicare locals, considerations can be given into generating information or recording best practice models for Medicare locals and how effectively to link them to the hospitals, the state based health departments as well as NGOs. In the area of oral health care, research could look at availability of health services, access to oral health care services, their management plans and population outcomes, national dental care program in the example of Medicare and issues surrounding cost implementation, legislation, education training as well. Another area in terms of the sub themes is the primary health care workforce. And issues around here perhaps could be the primary health care workforce of the future, for instance. In looking at the numbers and the skills, the skills mix and how these different roles and how they relate to each other in the primary health care setting. In the area of child and adolescent primary health care, we have gaps currently and the gaps are to do with the children transitioning from childhood into adolescence that this period has a gap that primary health care is not focusing at looking at conditions in those transition periods. And so research could look at how primary health care can focus in these areas. As well as the children transition from one phase to the other, they are social and economic factors that affect child development and adolescent health in the gaps. And so research could look at, for instance, the interactions between the social and the primary health care services. Two other areas in the sub themes are contribution of primary health care towards prevention and management of alcohol abuse and associated conditions, as well as contribution of primary health care towards prevention and management of overweight and obesity. So those are the sub themes. In looking at the funding, the funding hasn't changed from round one and two. The centres will be funded for about two and a half million Australian dollars over four years. However, to mention that for round three, centres of research excellence will be eligible to receive an additional $500,000 if they have a focus in the rural areas. So the extra funding will be more for capacity building of research in the rural areas. In terms of the application process itself, this stage has been broken down into two stages. And round stage one will consist of early core proposals. Stage one will be the core of expression of interest. And this has already gone out in the first week of November. And the next stage will be the expert review process that should take place around about mid December, where we have the expert review committee rank the expressions of interest, so that those high ranking expressions of interest will be asked to submit for proposals. And this should happen around about mid December. In the expression of interest phase, we are asking applicants to give us a synopsis of their proposal and in doing that to link how they articulate the after mandate. And so what we did was to go back to the after mandate and craft out four criteria that we expect applicants to address. And these are, we want to see how they are going to increase knowledge generation, how they will contribute to policy development and implementation, how they will increase research capacity, but as well as that show evidence of strategic partnerships. In the second stage, which should commence mid December after high ranking expressions of interest asked to submit for proposals, we expect the closing date to be around about April. And an expert review process again will take place around about June. And they will rank the proposals and give recommendations to the research advisory board, so that the research advisory board will announce the new centers of research excellence in the same month in June 2012. Once these centers have been awarded, we expect that contracts can be signed within 30 days. And this one to this, there will be reporting requirements basically that will entail reporting after six months, reporting the year's progress. And together with the year's progress, the implementing institutions will have to tell us about whether they have published in that particular year, what their student progress will have been like for the year ending, knowledge transfer and exchange activities. And we expect that they should give us a detailed annual research plan for the next year. As well as that, we will expect some verbal progress reports during the face-to-face meetings that after we will plan during the course of the year, as well as that we will have teleconferences for the centers of research excellence. And during these teleconferences, we also expect some reports. At the end of the four years, we expect the final financial equity report as well as the final report in a format that we call 1.3.25, and that can be found on the website. Just very briefly to go over the round three timelines. We have had the call of expressions of interest in the first week of November, and today we are having the information session for prospective applicants. Closing date for expressions of interest are the 9th of December at 5 o'clock p.m., Australia and Eastern summer time. Expert review assessment for expressions of interest should take place around about mid-December, so that in the third week of December, the notification of the assessment process can be communicated to the applicants. And there we will open the application process to the full application. So we will invite full applications in mid-December. And the closing date for the full applications will be April next year in 2012. And the expert review committee should sit to consider recommendations. Sorry. The expert review committee will sit to assess or rank the proposals in mid-June and make recommendations to the research advisory board within the same month, so that I guess by the end of June, we will have heard from the research advisory board which centres have been awarded. And we expect the centres of research excellence to commence operations in July 2012. The expression of interest form is on the website and so there is a link to the expression of interest form so that if prospective applicants would want to have a look at what the form looks like, the link is there. And I will end here and I will give respect to Robert. Robert, thank you. Thank you, Chelendu. I'll now introduce Mr Peter McKinnis who is the Pickard liaison officer who is based at AFCRE and in the department. And Peter's role is to assist in the interaction between the researchers and the department. And Peter will talk more about how he might be able to assist in terms of information for potential applicants for this round. Peter. Thank you, Bob. I'm Peter McKinnis, the Pickard liaison officer. I'm on succumbent to AFCRE from the Department of Health and Aging and the purpose of my role is to enhance the department's working relationships with the primary healthcare research sector. And I'm about supporting and promoting knowledge exchange and translation between the department and primary healthcare researchers and organisations. One of the key identified barriers to effective transfer of research evidence in the policy is lack of interpersonal connections between researchers and policymakers. I have a key role in navigating the connections between researchers and Department of Health and Aging officers. As part of this process, I'm available to provide general advice on knowledge translation strategies for your CRE application. I would urge you to make connections with the department through your existing contacts or if you need some support in navigating who you need to talk to in the department. My details are available at the end of this presentation. You need to contact me early if you want support in identifying or arranging, helping you assist, arrange meetings with departmental officers. It's important not to leave making connections with the department to the last week before submission of your application because it takes time to arrange these meetings and you need to give the department a bit of warning. I can recommend accessing both AFCRI's website and PICRSA's website for general knowledge translation and exchange advice. There are very useful materials both on PICRSA's website and on AFCRI's website. The role of the department in this process is not to be involved as an investigator or provide endorsement for your application, but it's about understanding the priorities of the department, the policy environment, the systems issues as the department sees them in terms of your research proposal. It is very useful to speak to the relevant people in the department to assist you in framing your application around those issues. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. That draws to a conclusion, our speakers. I'll just refer you now to two sources of information. We have a comprehensive question and answers on our website from the previous two rounds of AFCRI funding. We will update that progressively for further questions and answers that come in for this third round. If you have questions, you put them to us at director.afcri at anu.edu.au. All questions will be responded to and all questions and responses will be placed on the FAQ part of our site. We won't identify who asked the question, but for reasons of ensuring that everybody gets the same information, we will put all the questions and all the answers. As I said, the full list of questions and answers both from this and from the previous two rounds will be available under the FAQ section of our website. I stress that we can't give, if you like, one-off advice that only would be for one applicant. Any questions, even if you do come to us with an oral question, we will translate that into an FAQ and it will appear on the website. Thank you very much. You have those addresses on this website and I wish you all the best for your applications. Thank you.