Released 17/06/2024
Innovation, collaboration and knowledge in the ACT health and research sector will be on show at the annual Canberra Health Annual Research Meeting (CHARM) this week at Canberra Hospital and the University of Canberra.
CHARM connects researchers, students, clinicians, policy makers, consumers, carers, industry, administrators, leaders and partners in the ACT’s health system, exploring and demonstrating how research contributes to a learning health system.
This year’s event will showcase groundbreaking research across nursing, midwifery, allied health and population health, data analytics and policy, pre-clinical and clinical research, quality assessments and evaluations.
The event will also feature researchers supported by the ACT Government’s $1 million Research and Innovation Fund Fellowship Program that aims to assist early-mid career researchers employed in the ACT health system.
Keynote speaker Dr Lisa Kuhn, Associate Professor in Nursing at the Australian Catholic University, will speak on how to demonstrate the importance of research so that it isn’t seen as a distraction to core business.
Presentations will cover research on issues like problematic smartphone use in young adults, smoking and vaping susceptibility among ACT secondary students, and bone stress injuries in classical ballet.
Minister for Health Rachel Stephen-Smith said CHARM is a cornerstone event supporting the ACT’s health system to become a learning health system.
“CHARM is one of the many ways the ACT Health Directorate and Canberra Health Services are building nation-leading, stronger and more collaborative relationships between research institutes, tertiary education and our health service sectors,” she said.
"CHARM helps us deliver on our objectives in the Better Together: A strategic plan for research in the ACT health system 2022-2030 by investing in our people and showcasing the infrastructure and platforms that facilitate high-value research.
“Together we are working to achieve a health system that is fit for the future and provides world leading healthcare through research, policy, practice and education, and that will attract talented staff to Canberra and ultimately provide better health care to our community.”
To find out more, visit the CHARM webpage at https://www.act.gov.au/health/conducting-health-research/charm/charm-2024
Quotes attributable to Lisa Kuhn, CHARM keynote speaker and Associate Professor of Nursing at Australian Catholic University:
“Every single patient we care for could be our mother, son, lover or next-door neighbour. It really is time to see research and its translation into practice as our core business in healthcare.
“We’re incredibly lucky in Australia – we have brilliant people working in our health systems from a myriad of interconnected professions who are well educated, intelligent and imbued with caring ideals.
“If we weren’t curious as to whether we could do things better, then we would still be managing asthma by suggesting people smoke cigarettes and telling women not to worry about their chest tightness because women don’t have heart attacks.
“We would not move past any of these travesties in our history of well-meant, but ill-informed healthcare without seeking out and discovering better evidence, debunking myths and actually using high quality knowledge gained through research to guide our care.”
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Rachel Stephen-Smith, MLA | Media Releases