An Audit of Intellectual Disability Health Research Funding in Australia
Research funding is money that supports research projects. In Australia, some funding supports research about the health of people with intellectual disability. The research aims to improve health and healthcare for people with intellectual disability.
We wanted to find out
- How much money was spent on intellectual disability health research?
- What health problems were researched?
- How people with intellectual disability are involved in the research process? This is called co-design.
What we did
Researchers from the Centre looked at all funded health research in Australia from 2019 to 2024.
What we found about the funding
We found that:
- 33 of the funded research projects were about intellectual disability health.
- $20 million was given out to research about intellectual disability health.
This means the funding is very low compared to other health research areas (like cancer and disease).
Most of the funding went to:
- general health
- health services.
Very little funding went to
- mental health
- oral health and dental care
- prevention and healthy lifestyles.
Even though these are areas that are known to be major problems for people with intellectual disability.
What we found about including people with lived experience in research projects
We looked at funding instructions for information about including people with lived experience in research projects.
We found that inclusion of people with lived experience in research projects has improved in recent years.
- Most instructions said projects should include people with lived experience.
- Some said projects would be judged on including people with lived experience, and people with lived experience could help decide which projects get money.
- A few instructions gave clear details about paying people with lived experience.
This means the information about people with lived experience in the instructions was sometimes unclear. We think this information should be made clear because it’s important to have people with lived experience involved in research.
