Edith Cowan University (ECU) has been selected as the host university to lead innovative research into strategic and health priorities, including a cultural perspective in brain injury rehabilitation and using nutrition as a powerful tool to modulate the immune system.
Future Health Research and Innovation (FHRI) Fund will support two exciting new research projects with PhD students from ECU.
The support comes through the Clinician Researcher Training (CRT) Program, which is designed to build the clinician researcher workforce by providing scholarships for clinicians to undertake a clinically focussed, higher degree by research (HDR) at a WA university.
One of the CRT scholarship recipients will look at how culture can inform brain injury rehabilitation services. ECU PhD research student Meaghan McAllister explains how her research will be undertaken in collaboration with St John of God Midland Public Hospital where she is employed as a Senior Speech Pathologist.
“I am aiming to centre on First Nations peoples’ perspectives to achieve systemic change in the planning and delivery of rehabilitation and support after stroke and traumatic brain injury,” said Meaghan.
“Allied health clinicians and Aboriginal people with brain injury have made recommendations to enhance accessibility and culturally secure models of rehabilitation, however implementation is slow. Privileging Aboriginal voices, the project aims to accelerate change and practice in rehabilitation by identifying barriers and facilitators to implementing systemic changes.”
Meaghan’s supervisors are Professor Beth Armstrong (ECU), Professor Dan McAullay (Kurongkurl Katitjin, ECU), and Ms Linda Cresdee and Dr Dave Parsons of St John of God Midland Hospital.
The FHRI Fund support will also enable ECU PhD student Evania Marlow to research immunomodulation of the gastrointestinal tract through nutrition at Ramsay Health Care (Joondalup).
Evania’s supervisors, Professor Amanda Devine (ECU), Associate Professor Claus Christophersen and Associate Professor Ajay Sharma (Gastroenterologist), explain the purpose of this study is to elucidate the link between optimal nutrition, and the gastrointestinal based immune system in paediatric Crohn’s Disease, targeting specific nutrients.
“Ultimately, my research will provide more evidence around nutrition therapy and how targeted nutrition would lead to a reduction in the incidence of Crohn’s Disease through early detection of nutrition depletion and followed by supplementation.” said Evania.
“This would subsequently reduce the overall costs to the health care system, potentially enabling faster and more frequent remission in Crohn’s Disease.”
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