Highlights

Visit from Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly

Alfred Deakin Professor Catherine Bennett and Associate Professor Hassan Vally were fortunate to host Professor Paul Kelly, Chief Medical Officer for Australian Department of Health at Deakin this month to talk about all things COVID-19, including their current research and ways they could assist the Commonwealth Government in this next stage of the pandemic and beyond.

Congratulations!

Lemai Nguyen has been accepted as a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health. The fellowship recognises Lemai’s outstanding professional accomplishment in digital health and health informatics.

Tan Nguyen was among three recipients of the 2022 Lion Dental Research Award, which supports and recognises improvement in oral health sciences. The awards were presented at the 100^th annual International Association for Dental Research (IADR) General Session and Exhibition, which was conducted virtually in 2022.

Food Policies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heath (FoodPATH)   

IHT’s Aboriginal health research team, the Murnong  Mob have been visiting Aboriginal communities around Victoria as part of the Food Policies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heath (FoodPATH) project. This VicHealth-funded project, undertaken in partnership with VACCHO, aims to identify which food policy actions are likely to be most effective and acceptable for Victorian Aboriginal communities. The mob use culturally tailored group model building (GMB) methods, led by trained Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander facilitators from the Murnong Mob: Troy Walker, Karen Hill, Fiona Mitchell, Steph Thow and Joleen Ryan. Workshops have now been completed with VACCHO (Melbourne), Rumbalara Aboriginal Cooperative (Shepparton) and Moogji Aboriginal Council (Orbost), with further workshops planned at Wathaurong Aboriginal Cooperative (Geelong), Njernda Aboriginal Corporation (Echuca) and Bendigo and District Aboriginal Cooperative. The key outcome of the project will be a consensus statement on food policy actions from the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled sector.

For more information email jennifer.browne@deakin.edu.au.

Barwon Health and Deakin University Research and Grand Round Webinar Series

On 21 June, Anna Ugalde joined Dr Johnson George in the Barwon Health and Deakin University Research and Grand Round Webinar Series. They presented on an in-hospital smoking cessation program review and trial. Watch the recording on the Barwon Health website. 

Communicating impact to lay audiences workshops

Anna Urbaniwicz reflects on her attendance of the recent Communicating impact to lay audiences workshops hosted by IHT:

I recently participated in the online Communicating impact to lay audiences two-part workshop facilitated by Dr Tamika Heiden from the Research Impact Academy. The workshop provided me with an understanding of key definitions such as research impact, significance, and reach, and a plan for communicating my research with key audiences.

The three main takeaways I took from the workshop were:

1. Impact is when someone else uses, adopts, or adapts my work. They use my research findings but are not the actual findings or outputs themselves.
2. It’s crucial to understand your audience. Who are they? What do they want? Why would they be interested in my research? Who is the best person to communicate with them (it might not be me!)? How should the message be communicated to them?
3. Communicate with empathy. Be open minded and curious about different perspectives and don’t presume to know what my audience needs. Spend time listening to what my audience wants.

I intend to continue to refine the research communication plan that I began to formulate in the workshop to ensure I consider the wants of the audience at all stages of the research process. In my career I have attended numerous research communication workshops but found this workshop to be particularly useful, relevant, and thought provoking. Tamika is a very skilled communicator and workshop facilitator, with a wealth of knowledge on the topic. I would highly recommend her workshops to others wishing to learn more about how they could do better at communicating impact.

Slides and the workshop recordings are available on the Member’s Portal.

IHT Morning teas

Thanks to all who attended the recent morning tea at the Geelong Waterfront campus. The next morning tea will be held in the IHT hub at the Melbourne Burwood Campus (Level 3, BC building) on Monday 25 July from 10.30-11.30am.

We’ll be joined by a special guest, Dr Leonard Hoon. Leonard is Deputy Head, Translational Research and Commercialisation at  Deakin’s A²I² – Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute. He will present on A²I²’s work in the healthcare sector.