Consumer and Community Involvement Coordinator

The role of the Consumer and Community Involvement (CCI) Coordinator in the Department of Health’s Office of Medical Research and Innovation (OMRI) is to better connect health consumers and people with a lived experience of a condition, or carer of one, to research.

The CCI Coordinator can play a part in supporting and advocating for people with a lived experience within health to be involved in research, so we can be confident research dollars are aimed at addressing those areas of greatest importance and priority for consumers and the community at large.

The CCI Coordinator works to develop, assess and review OMRI's community involvement in research initiatives and capture its impact. They also act to support and link health research to consumers ensuring the research question is appropriate, the methodology supports involvement and the results can be translated to better health care.

OMRI, which provides administrative and operational support to the Future Health Research and Innovation (FHRI) Fund, works in partnership with the CCI Coordinator to ensure the FHRI Fund embeds best-practice consumer and community involvement in its activities.

Together we aim to establish a framework to measure community involvement in research, and ensure research funding is used to maximum effect by giving health consumers, people with a lived experience and the community a voice within funded projects. The CCI Coordinator role was created through a partnership between OMRI and the Western Australian Health Translation Network through their Consumer and Community Involvement Program (CCIProgram - www.cciprogram.org).

The Consumer and Community Involvement Coordinator role ties into the Sustainable Health Review, which noted that partnerships with consumers, clinicians and researchers for high value health care will ensure waste is reduced and that only treatments with a strong evidence base are funded.

If you are interested in finding out more about the CCIProgram and the CCI Coordinator based at OMRI, Department of Health, please contact us via email admin@cciprogram.org, telephone (08) 6151 1071 or mobile 0419 562 096. You can also visit the CCIProgram website – www.cciprogram.org for more information, resources and updates on how you can get involved in research and make a difference.