Capacity &
Capability

The HEAL Network is addressing the capacity and capability gaps in health, climate and environmental change, and credibility gaps in interactions between policy-makers, practitioners, industry and communities.

Building on the HEAL Future Leaders School (FLS) 2024, this year's residential school will bring together the successful EMCR applicants from across the Network to Canberra for a week of expert panels, roundtables, classroom lectures, problem-based learning, joint sessions with the HEAL Leadership Executives, site visits and more!

Expressions of interest for the HEAL FLS 2025 are now closed. The successful applicants have been notified. We look forward to seeing you in Canberra shortly!

For more information please contact Dr Enembe Okokon ([email protected])

The inaugural HEAL Future Leaders School (FLS) was held in Canberra during the first week of June 2024. The program was aimed at early to mid career researchers to strengthen inter-disciplinary research capabilities, and research-policy translation and communication. The school brought together 35 researchers from across Australia.

Click below to view presentations:

Day 1; Day 2; Day 3; Day 4; Day 5

The HEAL Early- and Mid-Career (EMCR) Network aims to empower EMCR researchers, including PhD students, across the network by creating and fostering a collaborative environment that supports professional development, research leadership and networking. We strive to achieve this through providing equitable access to opportunities in career development, funding, mentorship, leadership, networking & collaboration, building research capacity and capability. We also advocate for EMCR involvement and recognition of EMCR contributions to HEAL activities. The HEAL EMCR Network is coordinated by a democratic steering committee consisting of eight EMCR representatives. To find out more, join the mailing list or ask any questions, please contact us at [email protected].

Background

The aim of the HEAL Early- & Mid-Career Researcher (EMCR) Mentorship Program is to match self-nominated mentees and mentors from across the HEAL Network. We aim to match pairs on a needs/preference basis and conduct a short pre-matching survey to establish preferences from both mentees and mentors. Mentoring pairs can be at close-career stages (e.g. PhD student with first year postdoc) or further apart (e.g. Postdoc with professor), from different or similar research fields and with shared demographic focus, if requested (and depending on availability of suitable mentor/mentee) (e.g. from culturally diverse background, with caring responsibilities, rural/remote location). We hope that this approach will facilitate sharing of practical and relevant advice between those in similar situations where preferred, whilst also encouraging participants to connect with others from different disciplines and/or backgrounds.

Mentees are PhD students and EMCRs who would like practical advice on different aspects of career development. This can be on topics such as: how to successfully transition from PhD to ECR, how to establish networks and collaborations, how to improve the reach of individual research, how to manage work/life balance, etc. For both mentees and mentors this program is not only a chance to boost their CV but also to meet others from across the HEAL Network. For mentors specifically, this is a great opportunity to give back by passing on personal knowledge and experience, and to gain practical mentoring skills which can be applied in other and future aspects of their career.

The HEAL Mentoring Program is now closed. We are working behind the scenes on matching mentors and mentees and will be in touch via email once the process is finalised.

Next Steps

We ask that all mentees fill out the Mentoring Objectives Form prior to their first meeting with their mentor. If you have any questions along the way, please contact us at [email protected].

HEAL Travel Grants are available to support HEAL Network EMCRs, including PhD students, or HEAL Network EMCR Affiliates that can demonstrate undertaking of applied policy and practice translation and/or research aligned to any of the HEAL Research Themes. This scheme provides opportunities for awardees to present their research and/or projects to national or international audiences with funding support up to a maximum of AUD $2,000. For more details on the next round of funding (as it becomes available) please refer to the HEAL Current Initiatives webpage

Coming soon

The HEAL Innovation Fund (HIF) is a competitive funding program ($1 million over four years) established to assist the implementation of research priorities of the HEAL research themes and communities of practice to develop solution-focused projects focusing on climate, environment and health priorities. The HIF aims to support research with engagement that includes community and stakeholder co-design and has the potential to lead to further external funding. It has a special focus on supporting EMCR researchers. For more details on the past funded projects and the next round of funding (as it becomes available) please refer to the HEAL Current Initiatives webpage.

This HEAL Scholarship has been established in partnership with the Deeble Institute to educate and train emerging research leaders in strategic health policy and advocacy in health and climate. This scholarship supports scholars as part of the HEAL vision to catalyse research, knowledge exchange and translation into policy and practice that will bring measurable improvements to our health, the Australian health system, and the environment. Pfor further information, application details and timelines please follow this link to the Deeble Institute for Health Policy Research: https://ahha.asn.au/deeble-scholarships/