GLOWS Grant Program 2024–26
The Guiding Local Opportunities for Wellbeing (GLOWS) Grant Program 2024–26 offers research grants and scholarships to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, community organisations and their partners for work relating to HIV and viral hepatitis over the next three years.
Lowitja Institute aims to further increase health equity, address disparities that continue to drive disease transmission, and work towards elimination of HIV and viral hepatitis in all of our communities.
Four different grant types and two scholarship streams are offered over the course of the program. These include large and medium research grants (focused on providing opportunities for research and community programs aimed at addressing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community needs). The program also includes incubator, seeding or demonstration grants, scholarships and education grants. Funding tiers range from $800,000 over two years, to seeding grants and scholarships of $30,000 and $25,000.
Express your interest
Express your interest in the program here
GLOWS Grant Program is delivered in partnership with Gilead Sciences
GLOWS grant streams
- GLOWS Large and Medium Research Grants
The aims of GLOWS Large and Medium Research Grants are:
- to ensure that the research commissioned is of high impact for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
- that it represents value for money
- that it is led and owned by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
- that it has direct benefit to Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples and communities.
Research funded through these grants must address the overall goal of the program, being to increase health equity and address disparities that continue to drive the transmission of HIV/viral hepatitis within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and work towards elimination.
GLOWS Large Grant
Value: up to $800,000
Duration: 2-year projectGLOWS Medium Grant
Value: up to $300,000
Duration: 2-year projectApplications are currently closed for these grants
- GLOWS National Gathering Grant
The GLOWS National Gathering Grant is designed for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are working at or in partnership with an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community controlled organisation in Australia. The two-day gathering is an opportunity to come together and share experiences and knowledge of working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living with HIV or viral hepatitis and research into HIV and viral hepatitis.
This will be a chance to work alongside people with lived experience of HIV/viral hepatitis, people providing support to those living with HIV or viral hepatitis, and senior Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research leaders, to discuss topics such as developing research ideas, research ethics, and knowledge translation.
Value: up to $150,000
Duration: 1 yearApplications are currently closed for this grant
- GLOWS Seeding Research Grant
The GLOWS Seeding Research Grant aims to provide Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community controlled organisations the opportunity to identify or explore research priorities within their community related to HIV and viral hepatitis infections, diagnosis, and treatment.
Funding is also available to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander early career researchers, to provide an opportunity to explore and strengthen community research priorities and to generate the evidence needed to develop a research proposal.
Value: up to $30,000
Duration: 3 months
Applications are currently closed for this grant
GLOWS Scholarships
The GLOWS Scholarship program includes streams that support students wanting to develop their skills and knowledge on how to increase health equity and address disparities driving transmission of HIV and viral hepatitis within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Undergraduate and Postgraduate Public Health Scholarships offer supplementary financial support to assist students to undertake studies towards their entry into the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research workforce.
The Postgraduate MAE Scholarship stream supports an MAE Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholar through their studies towards their entry into the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research workforce.
Round 2 of the scholarships was open from November 2024 till January 2025.
2024 recipients
Scholarships
- Ms Jasmine Armstrong (Bachelor of Biomedical Science, University of Queensland)
- Mr Charles Fisher (Doctor of Medicine, Western Sydney University)
- Mr Ethan Jones (Bachelor of Pre-Medicine, Science and Health, University of Wollongong)
- Mr Aidan Kampers (Master of Public Health, University of Wollongong)
- Ms Jackie Watson (Master Public Health, specialisation in Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing, and Master of Health Leadership and Management, University of New South Wales)
Large Research Grant
Institute for Urban Indigenous Health (IUIH)
This two-year research project aims to explore the effectiveness and ongoing sustainability of an innovative person-centred hepatitis C virus (HCV) outreach model of care designed and delivered to urban Indigenous peoples by one of Australia’s largest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community controlled health organisations, the IUIH. This is a partnership with Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Community Health Service (ATSICHS) and University of Queensland. Building on previous IUIH research that identified urgent need for a novel HCV outreach model of care deployed by peer workers, the new Indigenous-led HCV outreach model of care will target the testing, treatment, and provision of holistic health and wellbeing supports to Indigenous people with multiple vulnerabilities and intersectional needs in Southeast Queensland on their terms; reaching Mob where they’re at.
IUIH’s new outreach model of care will specifically seek to work toward HCV prevention and elimination among Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander adults who face significant environmental and structural barriers (including racism and discrimination) to access timely, equitable, and culturally safe HCV services and supports. This is due to a complex mix of homelessness, marginalisation and socioeconomic disadvantage, interface with incarceration systems, stigma, complex trauma and abuse, distrust of HCV services, and/or poor mental health.
Medium Research Grant
Danila Dilba Health Service (DDHS)
The funded project, entitled ‘Improving the hepatitis B cascade of care in the urban Top End of the Northern Territory’, is a partnership between DDHS and Menzies School of Health Research. It is founded on strong First Nations leadership and participation. The overall focus of the project is to decrease viral hepatitis-related mortality in First Nations Peoples by implementing national strategies and filling important knowledge gaps that currently impede the implementation of these strategies.
This project will apply a co-designed model of care for people living with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) to accelerate access to care. This will be done by reducing barriers to care, increasing the capacity of the First Nations health workforce to provide care in a primary healthcare setting, increasing CHB knowledge for all (thereby decreasing stigma), and increasing participation in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) surveillance.
National Gathering Grant
Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO)
In line with the the Fifth National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Blood Borne Viruses and Sexually Transmissible Infections Strategy 2018-2022, the ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander HIV and Viral Hepatitis Skills Sharing & Development Workshop’ will provide a safe and supportive space for organisations and peer networks from around the country to gather and discuss the challenges and frustrations with current systems and care models, new innovative ideas, and scalable and sustainable solutions to engage people who are most affected by HIV and viral hepatitis within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Through the sharing of positive examples of previous programs and care models that ACCHOs and the Burnet Institute have co-designed and implemented, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander HIV and Viral Hepatitis Skills Sharing & Development Workshop aims to empower and support ACCHOs to prioritise HIV and viral hepatitis within their services and promote Aboriginal-led education, testing campaigns, and models of care that address stigma and shame.
Interested in finding out more?
For all enquiries, please contact glows@lowitja.org.au
News
Lowitja Institute congratulates GLOWS Scholarship and Medium Research Grant recipients 26 March 2025
GLOWS Grant Program to support efforts to eliminate HIV and viral hepatitis 18 January 2024
