National research centres welcome Australian Government’s drug and alcohol funding commitment
NDRI, and sister organisations, NDARC and NCETA have welcomed the Australian Government’s recent announcement of $268 million in funding to support drug and alcohol treatment and research in Australia. The funding over three years from 2019-20 to 2021-22 will be provided to Primary Health Networks (PHNs), providers of residential and non-residential withdrawal management and rehabilitation programs, alcohol and peak drug organisations, and other national activities already supported by the Government.
The funding includes $24 million for research into alcohol and other drug issues to continue to be undertaken by the four national research centres: the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at UNSW, the National Drug Research Institute at Curtin University; the National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction (NCETA) at Flinders University; and the Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research (CYSAR) at the University of Queensland.
The research funding will provide the national research centres with certainty going forward over the next three years, and will allow them to continue to direct their research efforts into increasing knowledge about the extent of alcohol and other drug related harms and the effectiveness of prevention, treatment and other intervention responses to these harms.
The national research centres have also welcomed the announcement of $7.2 million over 2 years to pilot a take home naloxone (THN) program in Australia which, in partnership with the States and Territories, will expand availability of naloxone to a range of additional settings frequently accessed by at-risk groups.
Concurrent to the pilot, the Australian Goverment has committed over $100,000 funding for research into the key principles and features of a nationally consistent THN model in Australia, which will be undertaken by the Burnet Institute and the National Drug Research Institute. The findings of this research will complement the ‘on the ground’ findings of the pilot, which will enable the THN model to be refined to a national rollout.
Posted on: 1 Apr 2019
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