Translating health research into clinical advice and health recommendations: The NHMRC experience 2000-2005

What is known to be good clinical practice is often at odds with what is actually done.1,2 Reasons range from clinicians lack of knowledge about available research evidence, to a perceived lack of relevance to consumers or clinicians, to a lack of the ability or the will to implement and/or sustain sound research findings. Similar disjunctions exist in the community at large, for example the disconnect between people s knowledge and their practice of healthy lifestyles3 and at government level, the mismatch between ideal and implemented health policies.4 Indeed, the many cognitive and other steps between knowledge and practice are well known2 but the universally acknowledged first step is awareness of the evidence. Australia s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) actively strives to facilitate this critical initial step.