Report from Australia

Abstract

The major bi-annual rural health conference has just been completed in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia. This multi-disciplinary conference is the key rural conference and organised by the National Rural Health Alliance. Approximately 900 people attend these conferences, making it a very large conference by Australian standards. This conference, like many others, had many meetings of many interest groups and associations organized around the three days. Importantly the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the peak research body for health and medical research in Australia, ran a workshop to gather information on how rural health research could be improved. The majority of the attendees noted that while the NHMRC has broadened its research interests in the past, that there is still a focus on RCTs and that the research outcomes that could be achieved by methods that build capacity (like action research) within communities should have a higher priority.