$7 million to target Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health

The funding, to be provided through the National Health and Medical Research Council’s (NHMRC) Targeted Call for Research (TCR): Commercial determinants of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health 2023, will stimulate innovative research aiming to drive better health and wellbeing outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Researchers from across Australia will share in this funding with project scopes that recognise and adjust for the interplay between social, cultural, economic, and commercial determinants of health and how they compound to influence health outcomes.

These projects are intended to collectively deliver on developing evidence that contributes towards a response to strengthen national systems, inform policy design and development, and contribute towards information that will empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders to take action.

Ms Carol-Lynne Christophersen from Menzies School of Health Research will lead Project White-Ant with Dr Cassandra Wright, which aims to generate knowledge that can support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to protect against harms caused by commercial systems.

Conducted in partnership with Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory and Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, this project will improve our understanding of how communities can take action to protect against harms caused by commercial entities, and what protections are preferred.

Project White-Ant proposes tangible knowledge and skill-building which will enable communities to influence which, and how, products and services are sold to their peoples. This approach will generate collective action to improve public policy in a context where effective policy and programs and different conversations are so sorely needed.

A TCR is a one-time request for grant applications to address a specific health issue where there is significant research knowledge gap or unmet need. They are designed to stimulate research or build research capacity in a specific area of health and medical science to the benefit of Australians.

All the funding details announced today are available on NHMRC’s outcomes of funding rounds webpage.

Quotes attributable to Acting NHMRC CEO, Ms Prue Torrance:

• “NHMRC’s TCR scheme funds targeted research aimed at responding to unmet or emerging health needs and reflects national, state and territory, and consumer and community priorities.
• “We know a lot about social and cultural determinants of health, but what we don’t understand, is how the commercial determinants of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health interact with other factors.
• “These projects will generate new knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commercial determinants of health, leading to Closing the Gap in life expectancy and improved quality of life.”

Quotes attributable to Ms Carol-Lynne Christophersen (CIA) and Dr Cassandra Wright (CIB), Menzies School of Health Research:

• “Project White-Ant aims to generate knowledge that can support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to protect against commercial determinants of health, such as how supply chains, product packaging, and lobbying, influence what communities can access.
• “We will ask communities what kinds of protections they want against commercial harms and explore what protections are currently offered in the law. We’ll also examine if these laws enable or disable Aboriginal communities to engage in this space.
• “[Finally], we will ask communities how the current approach towards commercial determinants of health taken by governments, impacts on other social and cultural determinants of health– this can include how business decisions have a flow on effect to impact on housing, nutrition, employment and connection to Country.”