About our adolescent CRE – Global Adolescent Health

About our CRE

Our Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) for Driving Global Investment in Adolescent Health has been funded by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council from March 2020 through to March 2025. The CRE brings together leading Australian research groups including the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, the University of Melbourne, the Burnet Institute, University of New South Wales, South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, University of South Australia 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.

Its purpose is to generate research to drive investment in neglected areas of adolescent health (mental health, non-communicable disease risk, injury and violence) including groups experiencing significant discrimination or disadvantage specifically, Indigenous young people and young people in contact with the justice system.

The CRE 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 might be taken to scale. There is a recognition that that evidence-grounded advocacy will be essential to support the evidence and investment cases, as they alone will not bring change.

The CRE will largely focus on secondary data (data that has previously been gathered and can be accessed by researchers) and 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).

What is a CRE?

The Centres of Research Excellence (CRE) scheme provides support for teams of researchers to pursue collaborative research and develop capacity in clinical research, health services research and public health research.

The objective of the CRE scheme is to improve health outcomes and promote or improve translation of research outcomes into policy and/or practice. The CRE scheme will also support researchers in capacity building activities, including in specific areas of need identified by NHMRC. Read more.

CREYATE (CRE Youth Advocates TEam)

The CRE is proud to have appointed a partnership group of young advocates. CREYATE is a group of young people with varying levels of experience in research and advocacy. CREYATE was formed to provide a youth perspective to the CRE, and to assist in ensuring the research is relevant to the lived experience of young people and aligns with existing (or hoped) advocacy efforts.

More information

If you would like more information, please contact the coordinator, Molly O’Sullivan at molly.osullivan@mcri.edu.au.