PHCRED
The Primary Health Care Research, Evaluation and Development (PHCRED) is an Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing funded program designed to increase research capacity and to support strategic primary health care research. Funding is provided to support University Departments of Rural Health and University Departments of General Practice to increase the pool of trained researchers and evaluators in order to contribute to innovative research in a variety of appropriate or targeted primary health care settings.

More information about the national PHCRED strategy can be found at the Primary Health Care Research and Information Service (PHCRIS) website: www.phcris.org.au/phcred/.

The Centre for Remote Health is a member of the PHCRED Tri-State Program. This is a collaboration between the University of Adelaide, Flinders University, the Spencer Gulf Rural Health School in South Australia, the Centre for Remote Health in the Northern Territory and the Greater Green Triangle University Department of Rural Health in Victoria. The program engages the Universities to work collectively to increase the pool of primary health care researchers, to build research capacity and sustainability in health research, and to facilitate the uptake of evidence in policy and practice. The program is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. More information can be found at www.phcredtristate.org.au.
The PHCRED Tristate conference is being held in Alice Springs on 24th & 25th September click here for details.

In the NT, the Centre for Remote Health has received PHCRED funding since 2000. Local strategic directions for PHCRED are to:
  1. Strengthen Territory-wide collaborative research efforts in primary health care among research organisations and between practitioners and researchers.
  2. Enhance the capacity of primary health care practitioners and organisations for research and evaluation. 
  3. Build the capacity of primary health care providers and the research community to design and evaluate models of PHC that take into account the social determinants of disease (social epidemiology). 
  4. Increase the pool of primary health care researchers by up-skilling early-mid career researchers, and supporting sustainable advancement of research careers in primary health care.
  5. Support early-mid career researchers to undertake more high quality primary health care research and ensure its relevance to police and practice by aligning it with identified needs and priorities.
  6. Disseminate and facilitate the uptake of evidence in policy and practice.
Collaboration with a number of NT and Federal government, agencies, community and non-government organizations, other research and educational institutions form our partners with whom we engage in research, evaluations and general activities that require a primary health care focus.

An electronic Primary Health Care Newsletter is produced three times a year. The principle aim is to promote primary health care research activities and knowledge dissemination relevant to those practitioners working in remote Australia.

A number of other research activities form our core business including an Evidence Based Practice Interest Groups, annual bursary awards, workshops, short courses and seminar series.