Five-year outcomes of The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre

The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre, administered by the Sax Institute, has released a report covering the outcomes and impact of its first five years: Changing the system, A partnership approach to chronic disease prevention.

The Centre was established in 2013 as one of three NHMRC Partnership Centres for Better Health to trial the use of co-production to increase the uptake of evidence in policy and practice.

Since then, it has produced internationally significant research, created a strong platform for research translation, built capacity in system thinking, and created new knowledge about system change for prevention. It has established a national profile and raised awareness of the importance of preventing lifestyle-related chronic disease in Australia.

The report details the findings of many of the 40 research projects the Centre has undertaken, involving more than 200 researchers across 22 research institutions in every state and territory.

It also features interviews with policy partners and practitioners of the Centre’s research to capture how its work is already influencing policy and practice.

The Prevention Centre has identified many early impacts on specific policy processes, but perhaps the most notable achievement at this stage is that policy makers’ participation in the collaboration is changing how they think and talk about prevention problems, contexts, solutions and methodologies. This appears to be a potentially transformative contribution to policy.

Read more here.