Developing new methods for building health policy capacity in Australia.

The Australian Institute of Health Policy Studies (AIHPS) has received a Linkage Grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC) for 2007-2010 for a collaborative action research project which aims to build capacity for health policy development, implementation and evaluation in Australia.

This project aims to strengthen Australia's ability to effectively address a range of health policy challenges by developing new methods for building health policy capacity.  The need for strengthening health policy capacity is widely recognised, however there is currently little evidence on which to base capacity building initiatives.

The project will describe and compare health policy capacity in three Australian state health jurisdictions (ACT Health, Queensland Health and the Department of Health (South Australia)) as a basis for developing, implementing and evaluating a suite of new capacity-building strategies in different state health jurisdictions.  These strategies will contribute to the future development of institutional and workforce capacity building and provide the basis for higher education and training in health policy.

The project will be coordinated by La Trobe University and the AIHPS Executive Office.  The project will be led by a multidisciplinary team of investigators including:

Professor Vivian Lin (Principal Investigator) - La Trobe University
Professor Kathy Eagar - University of Wollongong
Dr David Filby - Department of Health (South Australia)
Associate Professor Marylou Fleming - Queensland University of Technology
Professor Wayne Hall - The University of Queensland
Associate Professor David Legge - La Trobe University
Professor Robyn McDermott - The University of South Australia
Professor Brian Oldenburg - Monash University
Ms Deidre O'Neill - Australian New Zealand Schools of Government
Mr Ian Thompson - ACT Health
Professor Andrew Wilson - Queensland Health

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