RegNet scholars awarded NHMRC Ideas Grant

We are delighted to announce that Ashley Schram (Chief Investigator), Sharon Friel and Belinda Townsend has been awarded the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Ideas Grant 2021 for their project, Evaluating Systems Change for Health Equity: A Case Study of Australia’s COVID-19 Policy Response.

Renewed attention to the inequities in how individuals experience moments of crisis, such as a global pandemic like COVID-19, creates opportunities for governments to ‘build forward better’ using public policies that tackle the root of rising health inequities through systems change.

This project will build new resources to evaluate the impact of policy reforms on changes to the underlying societal structures that shape health inequity. Using systems science, the research team will study Australia’s COVID-19 policy response and the impact it will have on the rules, norms, power dynamics, and resource flows that stratify society and shape people’s health. This new evidence will be used to advocate for policy reform that better targets the roots of health inequity in Australia and abroad.