Dr Amie Steel was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship to aid her research on using a consumer-informed methodology to examine health promotion and complementary medicine.
Dr Amie Steel, Senior Research Fellow from the Faculty of Health’s Australian Research Centre in Complementary and Integrative Medicine has been awarded $999,763 over four years by the Australian Government under the Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowships scheme (opens external site).
The Fellowship will facilitate Dr Steel’s work, to use a consumer-informed methodology to examine health promotion and complementary medicine.
Dr Steel says, "This research is important because more than one third of Australia’s disease burden is due to preventable illness".
She says, "The 2021 National Preventive Health Strategy (NPHS) represents a water-shed moment in Australian public health and a long-awaited government acknowledgement of the role prevention and health promotion play in ensuring the health of Australians.
"However, the strategy’s success will always be limited if we do not have a clear understanding of the role of primary care complementary medicine practitioners in sharing health information with the community".
Dr Steel hopes the program of funded research associated with the Fellowship will help identify challenges and opportunities to improve Australian health promotion initiatives and make best use of the entire primary care workforce. This includes health professions often overlooked by government policy and strategy. She says, "Ultimately, this work has the potential to significantly benefit the health of Australians".
ARC Future Fellowships are awarded to the best and brightest of Australia’s mid-career researchers, to undertake high quality and innovative research, and to find solutions to key industry challenges, with potential future benefits both nationally and internationally.
Dr Steel was among six leading UTS researchers awarded the ARC Future Fellowship, and together they will receive more than $5.6 million in Australian Government funding to progress their research.
Read about all our ARC Future Fellows at UTS: $5.6 million for future-focussed research