Workshop #1

Facilitators:
Marie Pirotta
Jane Gunn
Jon Emery

How to design the perfect randomised controlled trial

Well-conducted randomised trials provide the most rigorous evidence of effectiveness of primary health care interventions. Trials can be expensive and require planning and persistence to be successful.

This workshop is the fourth gathering of the PACT group and will focus on designing high quality randomised trials in primary care, using CONSORT as a basis.

Implications of the revised National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans will also be discussed.

The workshop will be interactive, informative and allow plenty of time for meeting new colleagues and networking.

Who should attend:

• Anyone interested in randomised trial design and implementation in primary care.
• People currently involved in a randomised trial in primary care.
• Those with stories to tell and tips to share.
• All those interested in supporting PACT and networking.

Attendees are encouraged to bring with them questions and suggestions about 'perfect trial design'.

Workshop #2

Facilitator:
Felicity Flack

Grant writing for success

This workshop is designed for new and early researchers. Felicity Flack will present a step by step practical guide to writing grant proposals. By the end of the session participants will be able to confidently navigate their way through the complex and often frustrating world of choosing the right funding agency, writing a successful grant proposal and understanding the peer review process.

Workshop #3

Facilitators:
Steve Trumble
Ray Moynihan

Making Medical Journalism Healthier

Insights from the front line from reporter and author Ray Moynihan and Dr Steve Trumble from the Australian Family Physician.

Ray Moynihan and Steve Trumble will present an interactive workshop tracing the tortuous path taken by research data as it moves from the researcher's database to the public's attention.  They will present a series of examples depicting what's wrong with media coverage of medicine, how evidence is used and abused, and how we can improve the way we report medical research and ultimately inform people better.

Workshop #4

Facilitators:
Larry Green
Nicholas Glasgow

Contextualising de-contextualised evidence for use in Australian primary health care: APHCRI's approach in Stream Four

APHCRI has a particular interest in the use of evidence to inform primary health care policy making. This workshop will focus on one aspect of this - current approaches to systematically reviewing literature relevant to primary health care policy formation. The workshop will be of interest to people working in health systems research, or primary health care research and to policy analysts and decision makers working in these systems. Researchers familiar with quantitative methods are often attracted to "hierarchies of evidence" based on the rigor of the quantitative methods used. Systematic reviews of these kinds of studies are seen as among the highest form of evidence. Policy makers must take account of various kinds of evidence including such quantitative information. They have to be particularly aware of the contextual issues. Twelve groups are working within APHCRI's Stream Four, systematically identifying relevant evidence (most often using a narrative approach) around five key topic areas and then, through various consultative processes trying to identify realistic policy options fit for the Australian context. Participants in this workshop will develop insights into the methods used within Stream Four, learn of some of the problems encountered during this process, together with solutions for those problems. At the end of the workshop, participants will be familiar with narrative review processes and important perspectives to consider when attempting to contextualise evidence for a particular policy response.

Workshop #5

Facilitator:
Colleen Hayward

Indigenous Child Health Research (working title)

Description TBA

Workshop #6

Facilitator:
Martin Roland

How on earth can you measure the quality of what really matters in primary care?

In this workshop, participants will be invited to suggest aspects of primary care where it would be useful to be able to measure quality. We will then select between four and six of these, ranging from apparently simple areas to ones that look completely impossible, and work through these during the three hour session. We will cover along the way the range of methods available for assessing quality, and some of the formal approaches that have been used for indicator development. By the end of the session, participants will have a good insight into the major issues in the development of quality indicators, and will have sample indicators in all the areas chosen for more detailed discussion - even the seemingly impossible ones.

Professor Martin Roland, CBE. Martin is the Director of the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre and Professor of General Practice at Manchester University. As Director of NPCRDC, he has responsibility for the wide range of research projects being carried out at NPCRDC, but his personal area of research relates to measuring and improving the quality of care in the NHS. Martin leads the research programme on  Quality. His previous areas of research include back pain, hospital referrals, the use of time in general practice, out of hours care, and nurse practitioners in general practice. Martin is a member of the Standing Medical Advisory Committee of the Department of Health, and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He has been a principal in general practice for 25 years, working for the last ten years in the University's practice at Rusholme Health Centre in central Manchester.

Colleen Hayward, Manager, Kulunga Research Network
Associate Professor, Curtin University, Colleen was recently recruited from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services agency of the Australian Government. Colleen is a senior Noongar woman with family ties throughout the south-west of Western Australia. She has an extensive policy and management background in a range of areas and was previously deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Aboriginal Legal Service of WA. Other experience covers areas including health, education, training, employment, housing.

Associate Professor Felicity Flack, is the Coordinator, Clinical Research and Education at Princess Margaret Hospital for Children and the Executive Officer, Division of Clinical Sciences, Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. At PMH she is responsible for administering the internal grants program and for assisting staff and students to develop research proposals. At the Institute she writes grant proposals for local, national and international granting agencies. Her areas of research interest include paediatric respiratory diseases and environmental health.

Larry A. Green, M.D. is Senior Scholar in Residence at The Robert Graham Centre: Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care in Washington, D.C. He completed his residency in family medicine at the University of Rochester and Highland Hospital and entered practice in Arkansas in the National Health Services Corps, after which he joined the faculty at the University of Colorado . Dr. Green was the Woodward-Chisholm Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado for 14 years, and he continues to serve on the faculty of the University of Colorado, where he is Professor of Family Medicine and Director of the National Program Office for Prescription for Health. Prescription for Health is a five-year practice-based research initiative launched in 2002 that is focused on health behaviour change, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Much of his career has been focused on developing practice-based, primary care research networks, including the Ambulatory Sentinel Practice Network (ASPN). Dr. Green practices as a certified Diplomate of the American Board of Family Practice. He is a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, the World Organization of Family Doctors, and the North America Primary Care Research Group. Dr. Green received his B.A. degree from the University of Oklahoma and his M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine.

Professor Nicholas Glasgow ( MBChB, MD, FRNZGP, FRACGP, FAChPM) is Professor and Director of the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute at The Australian National University. A general practitioner by clinical discipline, he has held appointments within the University of Auckland, the University of the United Arab Emirates, the University of Sydney and The Australian National University. After completing his doctoral thesis examining the interface between primary and secondary care in a rapidly developing country his primary research interests have focused on asthma and respiratory health, drug and alcohol issues and the scholarship of teaching and learning. His experiences living in different countries and participating in different health systems inform his views on primary health care. These experiences significantly inform his approach to the research agenda of the Institute which focuses on health services research and the nexus between research evidence and policy formulation. He is a core member of the Australian Drug Evaluation Committee, participates regularly in review activities for the National Health and Medical Research Council and various journals, as well as being an internal and external examiner regularly for doctoral theses.

Steve Trumble is Editor in Chief of 'Australian Family Physician' and an Associate Professor in the University of Melbourne 's Department of General Practice. He practises as a GP in suburban Melbourne.

Ray Moynihan is one of the world's leading health writers, whose work has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review, and on ABC Radio. Working as a journalist in print, radio and television, he has also had scientific research and commentary published in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and BMJ. He is the author of Too Much Medicine? (ABC Books, 1998) and presented a three part TV documentary series of the same name. He has recently written about the science of research synthesis and the use of evidence in policy and practice for the Milbank Memorial Fund. In 1999 he was a Harkness Fellow in health care policy based at Harvard in Boston.

In his book Selling Sickness: How drug companies are turning us all into patients, Ray argues the modern world of medicine has convinced us we are a lot sicker than we really are. He says while it is true that many drugs are worth every cent in curing disease, he says pharmaceutical companies are marketing false illness to us with alarming success.
Ray believes the relationship between doctors and pharmaceutical companies can be compromised. He says 90 per cent of people who write clinical guidelines for doctors have conflicts of interest because of financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Ray is currently writing reports for the World Health Organisation on how to better use evidence in health policy making. He trains other writers to become health journalists.
He has recently written about the science of research synthesis and the use of evidence in policy and practice for the Milbank Memorial Fund.

Marie Pirotta
Jane Gunn
Jon Emery

Bibliographies not available