Do you have experience of what excellence in consumer partnership and experience in research look like?

This is your invitation to be a judge,

helping set the benchmark for excellence in practice.


A fundamental principle of these Awards is that we can evaluate and highlight excellence in practice.

To do this, we need individuals who have significant experience either as professionals involving and partnering with consumers in research, or as people with lived experience of health issues (health consumers) involved with and partnering with research professionals, or (for the participant experience award) as research participants, to help formally judge the Awards.

What will be required, in brief.

Participating in a judging panel is a voluntary role. In saying that, we will ask for judges to commit to being available from training and completing judging within required timeframes in orde to ensure the Awards run on schedule. The key times in which judges will need to have availability in order to meet their responsibilities are: mid April - mid May; mid-late June and during their category presentations in the  Event on 12-13 August. 

Judging will be completed via an online platform (for which there will be a training session), and we anticipate 1-2 online meetings within the judging periods, for panels to discuss their decisions. 

We are planning for judging panels to have 5-7 members per Award, subject to enough interest from potential judges. Ideally panels will be balanced with at least one more consumer partner than research professional, to ensure excellence in partnership reflects the expectations and aspirations of consumer partners. It is important for consumers and researchers to make these decisions together, in the spirit of partnership and learning and growing together.

Judges will be asked to provide a short bio of their consumer partnership experience (1-3 sentences), why they are interested in judging, and a photo for use on the website and marketing of the event.

As this is the first time the Event will be run, we will be asking for some patience and flexibility from judges as we refine processes and ways of working through the judging rounds.

For more detailed information about what we think judges can expect and will need to commit to, please refer to the preamble in the online Expressions of Interest form.


Apply to be a Judge by 28 February 2025.

To facilitate organisation of judging panels, we are inviting interested individuals to apply to be a judge by 28 February 2025.

Click the link below to express your interest in applying to judge one or more of the Awards.

If an organisation is supporting individuals with time during working hours to participate in a judging panel for these awards, we are happy to recognise this in-kind contribution as a form of sponsorship (In-Kind Support) for this event. To learn more about the sponsorship opportunities and apply for this recognition, please visit the sponsorship page.

Note: You can be a judge AND enter the Awards,

just not in the same category.

We understand that the very experienced individuals we hope will offer to judge these Awards, may also wish to enter them, to showcase excellence in the partnerships, projects and initiatives they are a part of, or aware of.  We therefore encourage potential judges to nominate to judge in a category(ies) they are unlike to enter or be entered into, so that they can still participate wearing both hats.  AccessCR plans to actively seek out and manage potential conflicts of interest as they arise within judging panels.

Whether or not you choose to express interest in formally judging these Awards, there will be other opportunities to engage in 'People's Choice' public voting pre and during the Awards event 12-13 August 2025. We hope you will follow AccessCR's socials or subscribe to the CCReW monthly newsletter for announcements about this Event.