The Physical Activity, Nutrition and Obesity Research Group: fostering population health research in NSW.

The requirements of policy makers for contextually relevant evidence are increasingly documented and understood. In response, there have been significant recent international and Australian initiatives to facilitate closer links between policy makers and researchers to address questions of policy relevance. The gap between researchers and policy makers has been well described by Lomas, who noted that: ‘yefforts by researchers and by decision makers seem to proceed largely independently. Both have their own (often misplaced) ideas about the other’s environment. Opportunities for ongoing exchange and communication are fewy’. One way to bridge this structural and communication gap is to develop formal collaborative mechanisms between researchers and policy makers, such as the establishment of university-based research centres.