The Preventative Health National Research Flagship challenge crosses science boundaries to bring together multidisciplinary research teams from CSIRO and other leading research institutions.

Using powerful new sciences we are investigating new approaches to the early identification of common chronic diseases and are developing preventative strategies to improve people’s health and wellbeing.

National Health Challenges

Chronic diseases take an enormous and growing toll on the health and wellbeing of people and health care systems in Australia and worldwide. The three major chronic disease burdens throughout the world are:

• cancer
• neurodegenerative disease
• obesity.

With the ageing of populations such as Australia’s, preventing or delaying chronic diseases is the key to improving health and wellbeing and containing spiralling health care costs.

The future is:

• better screening for and early detection of disease
• better understanding how environment and diet contribute to disease
• new protective foods and personalised nutritional and lifestyle approaches to disease prevention
• better ways to monitor and measure health, incorporating improved use of health data.

The Preventative Health Flagship's Research

The Preventative Health Flagship's research addresses our national health challenges in:

• colorectal cancer and diseases of the gut
• neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease
• obesity and health.

We are using advanced data analysis to develop new tools for improving health management and research through the integration and analysis of health data.

Using powerful new sciences we are investigating new ways to identify common chronic diseases earlier and developing preventative strategies based on diet and lifestyle approaches to improve people’s health and wellbeing.

The Preventative Health Flagship is developing:

• new ways of using genes and proteins to predict and prevent ill-health
• powerful new tools to analyse the causes of disease and ill-health
• new foods and diets to combat disease and promote wellbeing
• new ways to identify diseases before they become serious
• better ways to measure and monitor population health and to provide advice on key health issues
• better ways to help people manage their health issues.

Collaboration and cooperation is essential to the success of our outcome-focused science.

Our multidisciplinary, multi-institutional approach includes teams of scientists and technical staff with skills, proprietary technology and world-class facilities in a range of disciplines including:

• life and biosciences
• food and materials sciences
• statistics and mathematics.

Our Flagship goal is to improve the health and wellbeing of Australians and save A$2 billion in annual direct health costs by 2020 through the prevention and early detection of chronic diseases.

Partnerships

To complement CSIRO’s science capability, we are partnering with a range of prominent clinical, research, government and industry organisations with complementary skills to efficiently deliver research outcomes in our focus areas and ensure these innovations make a positive impact on the health of all Australians.

The Flagships offer many opportunities for collaborative work or study.

The Australian Government has allocated A$97 million over seven years in a Flagship Collaboration Fund to enhance and reinforce the development of collaborative partnerships which reflect the National Research Priorities.

Opportunities include funding for Flagship Clusters and projects, visiting fellowships and postgraduate scholarships.

Read more about CSIRO's research in Preventative Health.