Training & Events

Research conducted with policy partners can have a greater chance of impacting policies, programs and services.

But how do early career researchers build these partnerships? How do they manage and sustain them? And how do they get their research findings known and used?

Our skills-based training course has been developed to address these questions. It draws on the expertise of senior policy makers and researchers to help early career researchers build the skills required to initiate and sustain research partnerships with policy makers.

It will teach practical skills such as:

• How to understand policy priorities, policy realities and the policy environment
• How to embark on a new policy relationship, get new policy partners on board, and build your partnership skills
• How to frame your research idea for a policy audience
• How to lay the foundations for co-production
• How to establish the right governance framework for your collaborative project
• How to engage policy makers with your research findings.

Who should attend?

Early career researchers with significant research expertise, typically at post-doctorate level or with equivalent experience. Suited to applicants who are interested in influencing health or social policy by working in partnership with decision makers.

About the presenters

The course will share insights from leading Australian experts on their research-policy partnership endeavours. It features senior policy makers and researchers with experience in partnership research and experienced communications specialists. Our sessions include:

Associate Professor Sarah Thackway

Associate Professor Thackway is Executive Director, Epidemiology and Evidence at NSW Health, and Conjoint Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of NSW. She has more than 25 years’ experience in public health across the policy, front-line and research sectors. Associate Professor Thackway’s interests include cross-agency data linkage, systems development to measure the effective roll-out of interventions, improving data literacy, optimising the NSW investment in public health research, and supporting innovative ways to improve the use of research in the policy process.

Associate Professor Mary Haines

Associate Professor Haines has 20 years of senior experience across government, corporate, academic and not-for-profit sectors, with expertise in health research, evaluation and translational initiatives. Mary has held senior executive service and Board positions in the NSW Government, and serves as board member of Sydney Local Health District. Mary is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, School of Public Health, Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Senior Adviser at the Sax Institute.

Dr Carmen Huckel Schneider

Carmen Huckel Schneider is Adviser, Knowledge Exchange at the Sax Institute; Senior Lecturer and Director, Master of Health Policy at the Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney; and co-leader of the Health Governance and Financing Group at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy. She is a health systems and governance researcher with over 10 years’ experience in knowledge exchange, transitional health and health policy education.

Hugo Wilcken

Mr Wilcken is the Acting Chief Communications Officer at the Sax Institute. Mr Wilcken has a strong background in medical and health journalism in both France and Australia. Most recently, Mr Wilcken was the online editor with the Australasian Medical Publishing Company, which publishes the Medical Journal of Australia, and features writer with Australian Doctor.

The course is facilitated by Ms Sian Rudge, Head of the Evidence for Action Division at the Sax Institute.

Are you a policy maker or program manager who needs to use research findings in your work? If so, the Sax Institute’s training course could be for you.

In this 4 hour online course you will gain:

• A greater understanding of different types of evidence from research
• Skills to assess the quality and relevance of research for your work
• Practical experience using tools to critically appraise research to assess if it is high quality and relevant to your work
• Information to know where to access research evidence.

Topics

• Part 1: Overview of evidence and how to appraise it to support policy and program decisions
• Part 2: Interactive session – applying the skills to a real-world example

Who should attend?

The workshop will be valuable for policy makers and program managers/implementers with some experience working with research who want to gain tools and skills to critically appraise research evidence.

About the presenters

Adjunct Professor Mary Haines

Mary Haines (PhD) is a Senior Adviser at the Sax Institute and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Health, Menzies Centre for Health Policy at the University of Sydney.  Mary has over 20 years’ experience working in senior positions across the government, academic, corporate and independent sectors on policy, health research, evaluation and translational initiatives.  Mary has senior executive service and board level experience in the NSW Government. Mary has led research projects that have resulted in new knowledge about how to implement evidence-based care within health systems that has been harnessed by policy agencies and service providers.

Dr Carmen Huckel Schneider

Carmen Huckel Schneider is Adviser, Evidence Connect at the Sax Institute; Senior Lecturer and Director, Master of Health Policy at the Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney; and co-leader of the Health Governance and Financing Group at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy. She is a health systems and governance researcher with over 10 years experience in knowledge exchange, transitional health and health policy education.

Join us for an “Introduction to Economic Evaluation in Health”, conducted by experienced health economists from the Sydney Health Economics Collaboration (comprising the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney, UNSW, The George Institute).

The course will cover:

• An introduction to economic concepts and the health technology assessment framework
• An understanding of economic outcomes including utility-based quality of life
• Estimation of total costs with a focus on routinely collected data
• Calculation of cost effectiveness
• An understanding of the policy process with regards to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee and the Medical Services Advisory Committee.

Who should attend?

Researchers, policymakers, clinicians and other health care workers with little to no experience in economic evaluation. No prior knowledge of economic evaluation is required.

About the presenter

Professor Rachael Morton is Acting Deputy Director and Director of Health Economics & Health Technology Assessment at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney, and President of the Health Services Research Association of Australia and New Zealand (HSRAANZ).

Rachael specialises in trial-based and modelled economic evaluation, and elicitation of patient preferences using discrete choice experiments. Her research incorporates patient-centred and economic outcomes into clinical trials of diagnostic tests, new treatments and models of care to facilitate policy decision-making on the basis of cost-effectiveness.

Rachael has published more than 180 papers, advised several government bodies and committees including for the European Union, the Australian Government Department of Health as well as Australian state health departments, and the Economic Subcommittee of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee.

This workshop will help participants understand how to select the most appropriate approach when seeking to evaluate programs and policies. The focus will be on large-scale public-sector programs and the new methods used in their evaluation.

It will introduce participants to a range of evaluation methods, designs and measurement techniques, including both qualitative and quantitative methods useful for process, outcome and impact evaluations. It will also provide an introduction to the many frameworks that can be used to evaluate programs and policies. It will outline practical steps from program planning, through to developing and assessing evidence of effectiveness, and finally outline the process of scaling up interventions to reach a wider audience.

The workshop will include a particular focus on evaluating natural experiments, as well as complex programs and larger scale roll-outs of proven interventions (scaling up).

The workshop will be interactive and participants are encouraged to consider and communicate their own evaluation learning needs before attending, as there will be an opportunity to have their questions answered. There will also be some pre-reading material provided and it is recommended before attending [around 2-3 hours of pre reading].

Who should attend?

The workshop will be valuable for policy makers and program managers/implementers with limited evaluation expertise who want to get a general understanding about contemporary approaches to program evaluation.

Sessions

Session 1: Principals of program evaluation, evaluation principles in practice
Session 2: Advanced evaluation methods and practice– complex programs, scale up methods

About the presenter

Adrian Bauman is Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney, co-directs the WHO Collaborating Centre for Physical Activity, Nutrition and Obesity, and works extensively in chronic disease prevention research, in public health research translation and in the evaluation methods for complex (public health) programs. His expertise includes many years in health promotion program evaluation, physical activity research, epidemiological studies, and the evaluation of population interventions and behaviour change programs. He is very well published in the scientific literature, and has been named by Thomson Reuters (now Clarivate Analytics) as being in the top one percentile of the most cited researchers in any discipline in 2015-2018 inclusive.

The Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) are valuable data resources with untapped potential to identify and monitor patterns of health service use and inform health service planning.

In this course participants will gain:

• An introduction to datasets
• Advice on dealing with some of their specific characteristics
• View worked examples of how datasets can be used.

Who should attend?

This course will be of interest to researchers, policymakers and health service/program planning teams new to working with MBS and PBS data. The course is designed for those planning to use the Sax Institute’s 45 and Up Study or similar for linked data research and those interested in driving policy and practice change.

Content

This course includes the following topics:

• Why analyse MBS and PBS data and different data cuts available
• What information is captured, and which people are included, in the datasets
• Common elements in MBS and PBS data
• What can and cannot be measured using MBS and PBS data
• Peculiarities of the datasets
• How to choose the right codes, people, and study periods
• General advice for analysing MBS and PBS data, analysing aggregate data
• A case study for analysing individual-level data from multiple datasets.

About the presenter

Dr Anna Kemp-Casey

Dr Anna Kemp-Casey is a Research Fellow in the Medicines and Device Surveillance Centre for Research Excellence at the University of South Australia and an Adjunct Research Fellow with the Centre for Health Services Research at The University of Western Australia.

Anna has a decade of experience using PBS and MBS data to examine health service use in vulnerable populations. Her other research activities include cost barriers to medicines use, analysis of policy impacts, pharmaco-vigilance and medicines safety, and health outcomes studies using linked State and Commonwealth datasets.

Anna is a former member of the Drug Utilisation Subcommittee of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee and a co-founder of Medicines Use Research Australia.