Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains a leading cause of death and disability in Australia. While this burden can seem overwhelming, the nation's cardiovascular leaders believe that with improved coordination and pathways for prioritised translation our talented researchers can make substantial impacts on prevention, early disease detection and treatment.
Addressing this pressing challenge, the Cardiovascular Health Leadership Research Forum (CV HLRF), a new model linking Australia's health leaders to our research resources, could improve patient and economic outcomes by speeding up implementation and creating new preventative and therapeutic strategies in the CVD and stroke fields.
The national Cardiovascular Health Leadership Research Forum: a new data-driven model placing research at the centre of improving patient outcomes, an article published by the Medical Journal of Australia, now available for early view, highlights how this innovative framework connects Australia's world-class researchers with health leaders and identifies research priorities through evidence and expertise.
The Australian Cardiovascular Alliance (ACvA), as the peak body for cardiovascular researchers, launched the CV HLRF in 2022 to drive collaboration among stakeholders. The Forum aims to foster a continuous national conversation on cardiovascular disease priorities, ensuring research aligns with healthcare needs and can more rapidly discover and translate solutions.
Professor Figtree wrote, "The members of ACvA understand the importance of working as a coordinated team within a strategic framework to make the desired impacts on the country's greatest national health challenges. The CV HLRF can rigorously establish national priorities for research and implementation, of relevance to the health system and prospectively assess impact — all in real time. This will support the development of more sustainable funding models, leveraging multiple committed partners, as research clearly defines itself as providing a valuable service to health system improvements."
The ACvA's Clinical Themes Initiative has already worked with government through the CV HLRF to establish innovative strategies and new research programs relevant to prevention in hypertension and stroke.
In 2023, through the funding of the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), the federal government announced their vision of, "A health system fully informed by quality health and medical research". The CV HLRF model offers a pathway to achieve this by fostering deep engagement with the Commonwealth, states and key partners across health, community, and industry sectors, while providing a strategic framework to align research with identified challenges.
You can find the complete article HERE.
About us:
The ACvA is a member-based organisation, establishing a national collaboration of cardiovascular research bodies, scientific societies, individual researchers, clinicians, industry and non-government organisations.
The ACvA's vision is for Australia to be a globally recognised leader in delivering cardiovascular health outcomes through high impact, multidisciplinary and collaborative research, with deep linkages to national and international health systems, strong collaborations with industry and an enhanced translational potential through both policy and commercialisation initiatives.
