The TRIP-DPH project focuses on the core issue of how population health research can best be used to inform Public Policy. One of the key challenges for both Government and population health researchers is how to ensure that health policy is based on the best evidence rather than influences such as political or social pressures and trends. Policy makers both within Australia and internationally are increasingly looking to researchers to provide an impartial evidence base to underpin their deliberations and decisions. This ARC funded Linkage Project involving the ACT Health Directorate, Alzheimer’s Australia, the Centre for Research on Ageing, Health and Wellbeing and the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health aims to identify barriers that impede the optimal use of research findings in population health and the social sciences, develop better ways of ensuring that the highest quality evidence from observational research is used by decision-makers in population health, and develop a training model to improve processes by which researchers and policy-makers work together.