Partner organisations
This project was funded through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and supported by the University of Sydney, Central Queensland University, James Cook University, University of Technology Sydney, Apunipima Cape York Health Council, University of Queensland, Aboriginal and Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health Service and the Northern Territory Government.
Status/timing
STRIDE was funded from 2020–2024.
What is a Centre for Research Excellence?
The prestigious NHMRC Centres of Research Excellence funding scheme supports clinical, health services and public health research that aims to improve health outcomes for Australians and promote the translation of research outcomes into policy and/or practice. The intent is to bring together some of Australia’s best health and medical researchers in collaborations to explore and develop new solutions to significant health problems. Funded centres focus on health issues of profound importance for patients and communities.
What drove the investigation team?
STRIDE involved leading researchers from across Australia who had expertise in health systems and quality improvement research, participatory action research, Indigenous methodologies, epidemiology, public health, and health and social policy. The investigation team had outstanding national and international reputations and track records, and half of the investigators were First Nations. Our collaborative research program was built on shared principles that aimed to support Indigenous leadership and co-leadership.
What type of projects did STRIDE undertake?
STRIDE focused on collaborative research that aims at long term quality improvement in primary health care systems. There were four research streams:
- Strengthening community engagement in quality improvement processes. This aims to develop, refine and test methods, tools and strategies for effective consumer and community engagement in quality improvement processes to enhance service responsiveness to community and consumer needs and improve health care outcomes.
- Strengthening health system capacity for quality improvement. This aims to embed quality improvement processes further within clinical and non-clinical domains of comprehensive primary healthcare, for example strengthening service governance and workforce; engaging staff and management in quality improvement; and developing service-relevant best practice tools to address identified challenges, such as clinical follow-up.
- Quality improvement of social and emotional wellbeing. This aims to co-design, develop, apply and evaluate organisational continuous quality improvement interventions to support to social and emotional wellbeing.
- Quality improvement for health promotion and prevention. This aims to build, refine, and test quality improvement tools and processes for application in cross-sector, multidisciplinary chronic disease prevention and health promotion efforts.
What did we want to achieve through the work of STRIDE?
The principal aim of STRIDE was to support the growth and work of our collaborative network, all of whom were focused on strengthening Indigenous primary health care through participatory research. By working with established collaborations and building new ones across sectors, we maximised our impact. We achieved a substantial contribution to building the next generation of Indigenous primary health care researchers in university and practice-based settings. We wanted our collaborations to extend quality improvement interventions to new areas, including chronic disease prevention and health promotion, and to improve social and emotional wellbeing for children and adolescents. We strengthened capacity for conducting and using research to improve primary health care systems and supported knowledge translation and implementation relevant to ongoing high-quality research.
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