Congratulations to Dr Bernard Baffour (Senior Lecturer, ANU School of Demography) and Prof Alice Richardson (Director, ANU Statistical Consulting Unit) who will lead a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) funded research team for their project ‘Filling in the blanks: a spatial visualisation tool to align national health outcome data with regional health policy’.

The three year project aims to fill in the blanks in the presentation of small area statistics on smoking prevalence in Australia to provide geographically detailed estimates across the nation. Measuring health risk factors which are distributed unevenly throughout the population, such as smoking, is of vital importance for proper planning and resource allocation.

The project will be supported by the NHMRC’s new ‘Ideas’ funding scheme which aims to support innovative research project to help deliver improved healthcare outcomes for all Australians.