A research centre based at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) has been awarded federal funding to strengthen adolescent health research in the Asia Pacific.
The Centre of Research Excellence (CRE), led by MCRI Professor Peter Azzopardi, has secured $3 million from the National Health and Medical Research Centre (NHMRC) over the next five years.
Building on existing networks and collaborations across the region, the new CRE will advance evidence-based, efficient and accountable actions to improve adolescent health and wellbeing.
Professor Azzopardi and his team will focus on adolescent health in Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. They will work alongside other researchers, youth advocates and decision makers across the five countries.
He said this work would help inform the efforts required across the Asia Pacific region, home to more than half of the world’s adolescents, who faced key challenges including declining mental health, and a reversal of gains made in sexual reproductive health and rights.
“Our previous work has established the substantial unmet health needs of adolescents and helped to place adolescent health on the global health agenda,” he said. “The urgent task now, and the focus of our new CRE, is to define the policy reforms and actions needed to advance adolescent health.
“Our workplan builds on our earlier work and recommendations made in the 2016 and 2025 Lancet Commissions on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing. It also adds to our extensive partnerships we have established in the region.
“With the support of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Australian Award Fellowship Program, we have been recently collaborating with researchers in the Philippines to strengthen evidence for effective action. This CRE will enable us to greatly deepen this collaboration over the coming five years.”
University of San Carlos co–investigator Dr Nanette Lee Mayol said, “This project will not only strengthen our collaboration with MCRI and other researchers in the region but will likewise enhance the capacity of local adolescent health researchers and improve the utilisation of local studies such as the Longitudinal Cohort Study on the Filipino Child, to ultimately contribute to needed evidence-based policies and actions.”
Dr Mayol said the CRE would bring a focus to areas of need that arise during adolescence including mental health and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
The CRE also brings together researchers from the University of Melbourne, The Burnet Institute, Deakin University, The University of Queensland, The Kids Research Institute of Australia, Hasanuddin University in Indonesia, Ministry of Health in Fiji, PNG Institute of Medical Research, and Australian National University, along with collaborations with the WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA.
*The content of this communication is the sole responsibility of Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and does not reflect the views of the NHMRC. CRE grant number 2044755.
This article has bene republished from Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. Read the original article here.