Burnet Institute Director and CEO Professor Brendan Crabb AC

Burnet Institute’s status as Australia’s only medical research institute that’s also an accredited non-governmental overseas aid organisation is championed as a special asset in a profile published in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet.

In its current edition, The Lancet profiles both the Institute and Director and CEO Professor Brendan Crabb AC, who nominates three examples that encapsulate the impact of Burnet’s work over the past three decades:

• A pilot programme in the 1990s that was a crucial catalyst to the introduction of universal birth-dose hepatitis B vaccine in resource-poor countries;
• A landmark study on the causes of mortality in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which showed that in a conflict setting, diseases of a broken health system were much more important causes of death than bullets, and
• Burnet’s success as a developer of inexpensive, practical point-of-care diagnostic tests, which bring treatments and interventions to poor and remote communities.

The Institute profile looks at the research performed by Burnet’s Centre for Biomedical Research, Centre for International Health and Centre for Population Health, and their respective Heads, Professor James Beeson, Professor Robert Power and Professor Margaret Hellard.

This includes vaccine and drug discovery-type research in the laboratory, through to the development of new tools, to field-based epidemiological research, and intervention research that assesses and guides public health policies.

Professor Crabb’s background as a malaria research pioneer is documented, along with his views on leadership, advocacy, and the importance of building the capacity of local organisations in poor settings to deliver health programs with quality research.

“We want governments to constantly update and amend policy and guidelines in many areas of health, in line with the best evidence,” Professor Crabb told The Lancet.

“More and more the global health community is expected to have a greater impact with fewer resources. Embedding research deep into development programmes is the key to achieving that.”

Follow these links to read The Lancet’s Burnet Institute profile, and the profile of Professor Brendan Crabb AC.