CRE for STrengthening Health Systems in Remote Australia (CRESTRA)

Half a million people live in remote and very remote areas. One in three are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Remote residents experience the heaviest burden of ill health, preventable hospital admissions and potentially avoidable deaths. However, these Australians face many barriers in accessing the care they need: high staff turnover, persistent workforce shortages, fragmented care, and distance from primary and specialist services. This CRE will build on the strongest track record in remote health services research, and a demonstrated ability to influence health training, service planning and policy, to generate and apply new knowledge to address three key questions: how to achieve a stable and sustainable remote health workforce; how to efficiently and equitably fund the true costs of remote health service delivery; and how to achieve service integration and coordination for the many people living in remote areas with complex chronic disease. With the strongest possible engagement of remote primary health care services, we will focus on knowledge translation and building both a research cohort living in central and northern Australia, and the capability of remote services to engage in and conduct research that meets their own priorities. The CRESTRA team, as known and trusted leaders with decades of place-based knowledge, are ideally placed to facilitate collaboration across central and northern Australia. This CRE will make a real and measurable impact to improve the health and wellbeing of people living in remote Australia