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As Australia marks 90 years of nationally coordinated, high quality health and medical research funding, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is celebrating nine significant decades of discovery through to impact. Here, NHMRC reflects on how research has changed over time, and why research needs to continue to evolve in order to face current and emerging challenges impacting all Australians.

Natasha Ness, Emily Phelps

The number of Australians using medicinal cannabis has surged over the past five years. Around 700,000 Australians have used cannabis for their health in the past year.

Jack Wilson, Emily Stockings

A new nationally endorsed template aims to simplify and streamline Participant Information and Consent Forms for researchers and participants.

Lisa Eckstein

An international study has found that intermittent fasting has little to no benefit for overweight or obese adults, but an Australian researcher has raised questions about limitations of the review.

Nance Haxton

In times of strain, the quiet work of care — for patients, colleagues, and ourselves — becomes both more difficult and more essential.

Aajuli Shukla

A summary of the new Australian Guidelines for Assessment and Diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder has been published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Annika Howells

The recent childhood vaccine changes in the USA, which substantially reduce the number of routine childhood vaccines, will sow more seeds of doubt and confusion in the community about the safety, efficacy and even the need of vaccines. We should not follow the opinions of politicians and of unsubstantiated antivaccine groups, but follow the science.

Gary Grohmann, Robert Booy

The term ‘bikini medicine’ originally highlighted the narrow reproductive focus of women’s health research, but has since broadened into a much-needed campaign for equitable inclusion of women across all aspects of health care. Continued use of this patronising pejorative term may paradoxically diminish rather than augment the overall push for better women’s health. So it’s time to abandon the bikini and in the 21st century seek sex- and gender-specific medicine for the whole person.

Nicholas M Fisk, Caroline de Costa

Globally, one-in-nine incarcerated people have a history of IV drug use. In Australia and New Zealand, it’s one-in-two. The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has become the first to quantify, in two systematic reviews, both the prevalence of blood-borne diseases for incarcerated people, and access to a handful of well-known healthcare programs. It found that no country, worldwide, had all the programs available.

Becca Whitehead