Three Tips for Enjoying the Quiet Revolution in HMR
janice besch | MAY 2022
Over the last seven years there has been a quiet revolution in health and medical research funding in Australia. First we saw a major new funding source established for the long term. By 2016 funds were beginning to flow from the Australian Government’s Medical Research Future Fund. To date, over 700 grants and almost $2 billion in new funding has since been mobilised.
Photo by Louis Reed on Unsplash
During the same period, NHMRC has innovated to ensure that the funding base it provides for excellence in health and medical research in this country is optimised and that any distortionary effects in the peer system are identified and removed.
The third driver of the quiet revolution has unarguably been the global pandemic. The enormous and generally successful effort to meet the challenge of COVID-19 through internationally connected research has increased public understanding of the value of health and medical research. It has also shown our governments worldwide that their investment in all stages of research has life- and economy-saving value.
Arguably there has never been a better time to be pursuing a career in health and medical research. Yet we all know that the pressures on every individual within the research and innovation system have exponentially increased, with early to mid-career researchers in particular being concerned about security of employment and limited career progression opportunities.
Here are three pressure-releasing things you can do to make the most of the quiet revolution.
1. Every health and medical researcher, no matter the career stage, needs not one over-arching strategy to pursue their body of work, but two. First and foremost, you need to strategise for excellence and ensure you are in a position to score highly on NHMRC peer review. Second, you need to be completely familiar with the MRFF 10-Year Plan, identify all aspects of that plan that your work can contribute to, be ready to respond when a call for research is made, and ensure your work can, and does, contribute optimally.
2. Competition is out of fashion. Wherever you are on the journey from basic research to translation, you need to know and get along with your community. The highest performing research communities were once firmly lodged in the citadels of science, protecting the ramparts against imposters and supremely good at configuring their project teams for maximum funding success. Now they are more likely to be lively networks of talented and passionate innovators that frankly don’t care where you come from, and do know how to respect and protect each other’s rights in a spirit of impact-driven collaboration. There is still work to do, but the funders are getting better and better at providing the level playing field that these new networks need for success.
3. Be respectful of the revolution. If you are still taking old proposals and shoe-horning them into a different shape for quick turnaround funding calls, you are not showing respect.
If all of this sounds both too familiar and too hard to do when you are juggling a thousand priorities and either don’t have a ‘real job’ or don’t like the lack of certainty given your track record of success, then take a step back and ‘just breathe’.
There is no doubt that over the next few years we are in for even more challenges and change. The people and circumstances ringing in those changes are looking to you to make the difference that’s needed. With a clear head, strong focus and real enjoyment in pursuing excellence you will find your opportunities, and find success, more easily.
