FHRI Fund Programs and Initiatives
A program or initiative is a mechanism through which funding is directed to a specific purpose and contributes to achieving one or more of the priorities.
Programs and Initiatives are proposed and developed by the Department of Health. The Advisory Council makes a recommendation for consideration by the Minister. Programs and Initiatives are approved (or not) by the Minister. The Department of Health is responsible for implementing the approved Programs and Initiatives and managing them post-award.
Selection processes
For each program or initiative, one of the following selection processes is utilised to determine recipients of funding:
- Selection based on assessment criteria: eligible applications are critically evaluated through an open and competitive process that includes a panel review against defined assessment criteria with this informing the selection of funding recipients.
- Selection based on measures of excellence: eligible applications receive funding based on an open competitive process that includes a ‘research excellence’ measure, such as the amount of nationally and internationally competitive, peer-reviewed, grant income they have received, the number of PhD students supported, or the number of new projects approved by an appropriate review committee (i.e. scientific review committee or human research ethics committee) to demonstrate recency and relevancy.
Grant review panels
Expert Committees may be established to provide advice (such as on specific issues, Programs and Initiatives and/or the assessment of proposals for funding). For clarity, where committees are established for the purposes of assessment of applications for funding these are referred to as Review Panels or Grant Review Panels. Expert Committees are accountable to the Department of Health not the Advisory Council. They may be established at the request of the Minister, the Advisory Council, the Director General of the Department of Health or OMRI.
The ongoing participation of the WA health and medical research and innovation community and of consumers in grant review panels assists the Office of Medical Research and Innovation (OMRI) to ensure competitive grant review processes and decisions on funding are based on impartial and expert advice.
Each time a review process is required, OMRI will draw grant reviewers from a pool of reviewers and subject matter experts. In selecting reviewers, consideration is given to an appropriate spread of expertise, experience, age and gender, to ensure diversity and the best mix of skills on each review panel.
To assist with identifying suitable panel members, nominations are sought from people who are interested in being a reviewer in an application assessment process. To express an interest in joining a grant review panel please visit Future Health Research and Innovation Fund - Get involved