Have you witnessed, delivered or experienced,
excellence in consumer partnership in research
and/or a gold-class participant experience?
This is your invitation to nominate
others, or self-nominate for an Award
and tell the world about it!
** ENTRY DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 9AM, 29 APRIL 2025 **
The Award categories for 2025 are:
A - Excellence in Consumer Partnership in Non-Commercial Research,
B - Excellence in Consumer Partnership in Industry-Funded Research and Development,
C - Excellence in Consumer Partner Capacity Building,
D - Excellence in Research Participant Experience,
E - Outstanding Individual Consumer Impact on Health and Medical Research,
F - Outstanding Consumer Advisory Group Impact on Health and Medical Research
At their discretion, judging panels will also be given latitude to highlight entries, whether or not they are finalists or winners, for 'Special Mention'. In particular, this may be applicable if there has been exceptional practice in engaging/partnering with those often underrepresented in research and creating safe, welcoming environments for partnership or participation in research, that could inspire others to engage more diversely.
Subject to sufficient votes, a People's Choice award may also be presented.
The formal award winners, as selected and announced by the judging panels on the 13 August 2025, will receive a trophy and token prize money (mre to come on this) to be awarded in person at a later date. Special mentions and People's Choice Awards will receive a framed certificate.
All entries will be asked to consent to release of their entry subsequent to the Awards, winners or not, as a library of initiatives and individuals others can learn from and be inspired to action.
What can be entered?
These Awards aim to celebrate partnerships between consumers and research sector professionals anywhere in the health and medical research ecosystem (including health technology research and development) that are impacting why, when, what or the how of what is done.
Nominations could be received for partnerships between consumers and research sector professionals in:
* different types of research: E.g. lab-based; simulation/modelling/in-silico research; diagnostics, clinical research/trials; translational research; implementation science; health services research; preventative or public health research.
* all or some parts of the research cycle; e.g. ideation, feasibility, protocol development, operationalising research, documentation, collecting data, data analysis, authorship, translation/implementation into practice.
* one or more health conditions, or health condition agnostic
* developing infrastructure, policy, procedures, training and mentoring to support research and/or consumer partnership in it.
* research grants/funding (outside philanthropy/fundraising), governance and oversight of research.
For Award D in particular, we are looking to shine a light on what helps make an excellent experience for a research participant. While we particularly encourage research participants to nominate the teams that gave them a great experience (and what made it a great experience), sites and sponsors can also nominate their efforts to improve the research participant experience, evidenced by feedback they have received. (If you are implementing the National Clinical Trials Governance Framework, you should have evidence you can draw from to inform your nomination).
Entries are made by an individual (the nominator) who will nominate a partnership they are involved in (ie self nomination), or others they think should be celebrated (internal or external nominations). We ask a second individual (called the nominee) to accept the nomination, just to make sure it is OK. While the nominator will be the key point of contact for the Awards, it is the partnership activity (awards A, B, C, F), the participant experience (award D) or the individual (award E), and all involved, which these Awards aim to recognise.
There is alot more explanation about what can be entered, what judges will be looking for in each category and the Awards process on the landing page of the Awards Platform.
How to enter
The process for entry is quite simple.
1. Register as a user on the Awards Platform. (You will need to input an email address and password of 12 or more characters, including a special character).
2. Read the Key Information about the Awards Process, Awards Criteria & What the Judges Will Look For, Video Tips, and more. Especially look at the FAQs as this is where we are updating information as questions come in. Download dummy entry forms for the category of interest so you can prepare.
3. Record your video (no longer than 3 mins), so you are ready to upload with your entry. The video is the most important element of the entry, that judges will primarily focus on to assess entries.
4. Create and submit your online entry by 29 April, 2025, 9aM AEST (Sydney time). The name of the entry should describe the nature of the partnership activity (Awards, A, B, C, F), the participant experience related initiative (Award D) or the individual being nominated (Award E) ie, what or who you are nominating. Remember to use plain language as much as possible. Sixty percent of our judges are experienced consumer partners in research.
5. Cross your fingers and toes, and hang out for updates on how your entry is moving through the process. And we have a special fun activity for entrants to get involved in while they wait, should they choose to.
For noting, nominees will have until the 2 May, 4pm AEST to accept the nominations, so please make sure they are checking their email and actioning this as soon as possible. (if they do not receive an email within 24hr of your submission, please contact us!). If entries are not accepted by nominees in time, they can't pass through to the judging round.
There are no restrictions on the number of nominations you can make, other than you cannot enter a nominated activity (ie the same video about the same thing) to more than 1 category. There is more information about that on the Awards platform at in the discussion at the end of the Q&A video.
You will also be able to participate in the public voting round in early June, and the live finalist presentations event and winners announcement, virtually, on the 12-13 August.
We hope you will make nominations, and look forward to seeing them.