Congratulations to three outstanding The Kids Research Institute Australia researchers who have received second chance WA health funding designed to support researchers who have narrowly missed out on highly competitive national funding.
The WA Near Miss Awards: Emerging Leaders 2023 (WANMA EL) program, backed by the Western Australian Government’s Future Health Research and Innovation (FHRI) Fund, provides funding in the form of one-year EL Grants or 2–3-year EL Fellowships.
WANMA EL Grants can be used to enhance the researcher’s original application for National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) funding, while EL Fellowships allow recipients to undertake the work proposed in their NHMRC application.
Two The Kids Research Institute Australia-based researchers – ear health researcher Associate Professor Chris Brennan-Jones and cancer researcher Associate Professor Rishi Kotecha – have received EL Fellowships, while respiratory researcher Dr Katherine Landwehr, also based at The Kids Research Institute Australia, has received an EL Grant.
Associate Professor Brennan-Jones, who is Head of Ear Health at the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases at The Kids Research Institute Australia and an Associate Professor at Curtin University’s School of Allied Health, was awarded up to $951,714 for his project Djaalinj Waakinj (Listening, Talking): partnering with the community to improve prevention, treatment and long-term outcomes for children with ear disease and hearing loss.
The project’s two-pronged approach aims to reduce the impact of otitis media (OM), which when untreated or treated ineffectively is the leading cause of preventable hearing loss globally.
Associate Professor Brennan-Jones aims to reduce waiting times for diagnosis and treatment via the Ear Portal telehealth platform, while also informing policy changes in the way OM is treated to prevent long-term hearing loss and reduce the need for surgical intervention.
Associate Professor Kotecha, who is Co-Head of Leukaemia Translational Research at the The Kids Cancer Centre and an Associate Professor with the Curtin Medical School, was awarded up to $881,371 for research into improved cancer treatments for children which can avoid the debilitating side effects that come with many modern therapies.
Associate Professor Kotecha’s program aims to improve survival rates by evaluating new drugs for high-risk paediatric leukaemia, developing clinical strategies to prevent infectious toxicities, and providing treatment recommendations for rare childhood cancers.
Dr Landwehr, from the Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre – a powerhouse partnership between The Kids Research Institute Australia, Perth Children’s Hospital and Perth Children’s Hospital Foundation – and Curtin University’s School of Population Health, has been awarded a $100,000 EL Grant to investigate the toxic effects of air pollution and its role in childhood lung disease.
The Kids Research Institute Australia Executive Director, Professor Jonathan Carapetis, said the WANMA EL funding provided a critical stopgap for researchers who had only just missed out on national funding.
“We know from the feedback on these researchers’ applications that their projects are high quality and deserving of support, so it is wonderful that the WA Government is prepared to step in and provide a safety net to ensure they can either have a better shot at NHMRC funding or, in the case of the Fellowships, undertake the work they would have done had they succeeded in the original application.
“This represents a critical investment in WA-led science, providing crucial back-up in what we know is a tough funding environment for everyone working in health and medical research.”
For more information on the WANMA EL program and grants awarded under this round, see here.