New Centre of Excellence in primary health care funded

Primary Care research has received a boost with today's announcement of $2.5m in funding from the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute (APHCRI) to establish a Centre of Excellence.

This is the second major grant received recently by Head of the UQ Discipline of General Practice, and President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Professor Claire Jackson (School of Medicine) and her team.

They were also recipients of a National Health and Medical REsearch Council grant for The Centre for Research Excellence (CRE) in Improving Quality and Safety at the Interface Between Primary and Secondary Level Care.

The APHCRI grant will fund a centre focused on building quality, governance, performance and sustainability in primary health care.

Claire described the funding as "a huge opportunity to lever UQ’s health service research strengths in this arena and build international and national research opportunities for our research community".

Centre chief investigators are:

Chief investigators
• Professor Claire Jackson, Head, Discipline of General Practice, School of Medicine, University of Queensland,
• Professor James Dunbar, Professor and Director, Greater Green Triangle University, Department of Rural Health, Flinders and Deakin Universities
• Professor Prasuna Reddy, Chair of Rural Mental Health, School of Medicine, Flinders University, and Director of Research, Greater Green Triangle University, Department of Rural Health, Flinders and Deakin Universities
• Professor Paul Batalden, Program Director, Darmouth-Hitchcock Leadership Preventive Medicine Residency, Darmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Darmouth Medical School
• Associate Professor Julie Johnson, Deputy Director, Centre for Clinical Governance Research, University of New South Wales
• Professor Jeffrey Fuller, Professor of Nursing (Primary Health Care), Flinders University
Caroline Nicholson, Director, Mater UQ (University of Queensland Centre) for Primary Health Care Innovation, Mater Health Services, Mater Mother’s Hospital
• Dr Shelley Wilkinson, Adjunct Research Fellow/Senior Maternal Health Research Dietitian, Mater Mother’s Hospital