Centre of Research Excellence in Global Adolescent Health

Research to drive investment in neglected areas of adolescent health, including groups experiencing significant discrimination or disadvantage specifically, Indigenous young people and young people in contact with the justice system.

Australia’s National Health and Medical Research has funded an Australian Centre for Research Excellence (CRE) in “Driving Global Investment in Adolescent Health” Council from March 2020 through to March 2025.

This brings together leading Australian research groups, including the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, the University of Melbourne, the Burnet Institute, the University of New South Wales, the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute and the University of Queensland.

It brings existing partnerships globally, generated through work with the Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing and will extend partnerships with Peking University, China and Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia.

Research to drive investment in neglected areas of adolescent health, including groups experiencing significant discrimination or disadvantage specifically, Indigenous young people and young people in contact with the justice system.

Neglected areas include mental health, non-communicable disease risk, injury and violence, and substance abuse. Neglected areas include mental health, non-communicable disease risk, injury and violence, and substance abuse.

We will provide the evidence needed for investments in these overlooked areas and priority groups. This includes how we might measure adolescent health better and what works for preventing and responding to adolescent health challenges and what the cost of those actions might be. There is not only an emphasis on what the investments might be in adolescent health, but also the extent to which such investments may be scaled up. There is a recognition that evidence-grounded advocacy will be essential to support the evidence and investment cases, as they alone will not bring change.

We are focused on secondary data (data that researchers have gathered and accessed). The work will include syntheses of existing evidence, data analyses of existing primary data and economic modelling (to translate analyses/synthesis of evidence into policy recommendations for investment).

Partnership group of young people

We are appointing a partnership group of young advocates. This group will assist the research team in making its program of work relevant to the lived experience of young people and aligned with adolescent health and wellbeing advocacy efforts already in place.

The main objectives are to:

Ensure youth perspectives inform the CRE work plan.
Facilitate communication with young people, advocates and their organisations about the work of the CRE
Discussion of further priority areas for the research
Ensure research outputs are useful to the work of youth advocates
Advise on strategies for CRE program areas to engage meaningfully with young people
Support CRE partnerships with young advocates, their networks and organisations.