Impact assessment of a national research collaboration improving health outcomes for working-age Australians with disability

TL;DR

This study evaluated the impact of a disability research collaboration in Australia, showing significant economic and policy benefits over seven years.

Contribution

The paper introduces a framework for assessing the impact of cross-disciplinary research collaborations and provides actionable recommendations for future evaluations.

Findings

The $5.4 million investment in the CRE-DH led to $39.9 million in additional funding through grants and fellowships.

The collaboration produced 148 publications and influenced 45 policy documents, including those related to COVID-19 and disability.

The CRE-DH supported 9 early career researchers and held 11 external events to strengthen disability research capacity.

Abstract

Despite growing recognition of the need for cross-disciplinary research collaborations to tackle complex issues, the impact of such collaborations is rarely documented. This study applied an impact framework to assess the impact of a cross-disciplinary disability research collaboration, the Centre of Research Excellence in Disability and Health (CRE-DH) (2016–2023). We report on the utility of the impact framework for this task and propose a set of actions to ensure the effectiveness of impact evaluations for other cross-disciplinary collaborations.

We retrospectively applied the Framework to Assess the Impact from Translational health research (FAIT) to the CRE-DH, which included a modified payback framework, an economic analysis and a narrative account of the impact generated by the collaboration. The impact assessment covered the period 2016–2024. Data were gathered from project records, reports and publications and secondary analysis of interviews conducted with external and internal stakeholders. Data were mapped to five impact domains: knowledge advancement, capacity strengthening, policy contribution, economic impact and community benefit.

The $5.4 million (2024 AUD) initially invested in the CRE-DH delivered an additional investment of $39.9 million (2024 AUD) (sensitivity analysis $26.5–53.2 million) in leveraged grants, consultancies and fellowships. Collectively, CRE-DH members produced 148 publications, 4 books, 15 book chapters, 48 reports, 17 fact sheets and 132 media articles. Publications were mentioned in the media more than 3400 times and cited in 45 policy documents. The CRE-DH funded and developed 9 early career disability researchers, and held 11 external events to strengthen capacity in disability research with policymakers and disability organizations. A total of 29 policy submissions were made, with those focussing on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and its disproportionate impact on people with disability having particular influence on government policy.

Applying FAIT retrospectively to assess a cross-disciplinary research collaboration’s impact allowed us to examine multiple benefit domains. The CRE-DH demonstrated impact in advancing knowledge, strengthening capacity, influencing policy and generating economic benefits; evidence on quantifiable community benefit is not yet available. However, our assessment was limited by insufficient data collection on some critical issues, such as disability representation. As a result, we propose several recommendations for applying FAIT in future research collaborations.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12961-026-01448-7.

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