AMA Submission to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) -Draft Road Map 3: A Strategic Framework for Improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health through Research
The AMA provided a submission to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) - Draft Road Map 3: A Strategic Framework for Improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health through Research.
Road Map 3 is to guide and communicate the objectives and investment of the NHMRC in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research for the next decade. Road Map 3 builds on the previous documents - Road Map 1 (2002) and Road Map 2 (2010).
The AMA strongly supports the submissions presented to the NHMRC public consultation process by the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association (AIDA) and Professor Ian Ring, with specific acknowledgment that the overwhelming majority of research conducted in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities is currently conducted by non-Indigenous people.
We agree that to achieve the goals of this strategic framework, stronger emphasis is needed to promote and advance Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership in research. There is an opportunity for Road Map 3 to include explicit targets to develop Indigenous researchers and/or to expand on the NHMRC’s Targeted Calls for Research.
In noting this, the AMA also strongly supports AIDA’s recommendation to “…enable communities to directly engage/commission research relevant to them via the NHMRC.” The AMA agrees that such a process would give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities greater influence and autonomy over the research conducted within their community.
