Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the nation's main funding body for medical research, aims to get more proactive in translating findings from bench to bedside after Health Minister Nicola Roxon approved two new principal committees.

The new Health Care Committee, announced in September, is charged with providing advice to the council and chief executive officer on applying research knowledge to health care in hospitals, surgeries and clinics. The new Prevention and Community Health Committee, meanwhile, will advise on public health and prevention of illness. They will also join the NHMRC's other principal committees—the Research, Health Ethics and Human Genetics committees—in recommending study areas for priority funding.

Describing the dynamics within the NHMRC, Warwick Anderson, its chief executive officer, likens the council to a deliberative body that sets a broad agenda, with the committees driving and implementing that agenda.

“The energy tends to come from the committees,” says Anderson, for whom the establishment of the new committees is a welcome reform. “If we are about research and its translation into better prevention or patient care, you can't just do the research bit.”

In 2009, the NHMRC allocated AU$860 million ($790 million) for research, an increase of almost AU$200 million over the previous year, as the research sector received support from the Australian Government's economic stimulus in response to the financial crisis.

The new 16-member Health Care Committee is chaired by John Horvath, formerly Australia's chief medical officer, and includes Mukesh Haikerwal, a former president of the Australian Medical Association, along with Mark Wenitong, past president and founder of the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association. Likely priorities for this committee are mental health and chronic disease, to be finalized in the new year.

Kerin O'Dea will head the Prevention and Community Health Committee. O'Dea has served as director of the Sansom Institute's division of health sciences at the University of South Australia and is an expert in nutrition and public health.

The chairs of the five NHMRC committees will form a new Chairs Consultative Group along with Anderson and Michael Good, director of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research. This initiative is designed to ensure that the organization develops what Health Care Committee chairman Horvath calls “whole-of-NHMRC” views and policies.

“The committees should not work as silos,” he says. “The process whereby the NHMRC is going to bring a total view to things is a very important new way through.”

Approval of the new committees comes after the NHMRC has been bolstered by recruitment of more in-house expertise. It is now positioned to take an enhanced role in supporting the national government's health delivery agenda, which has expanded over the last decade as state and territory governments have struggled to maintain service quality.