December – January Highlights
Celebrating 10 years of working together – Deakin Distinguished Professor Trish Livingston and Professor Anna Ugalde
In October 2024, Deakin Distinguished Professor Trish Livingston and Professor Anna Ugalde celebrated 10 years of working together at Deakin University. During this time, they established highly productive teams, positive environments, and made a significant impact on the lives of people living with cancer and their carers. They have published over 30 joint articles, presented over 40 conference proceedings at international and national conferences, co-supervised students, contributed to significant national and State Government reports, and received over $20M from granting bodies. As they reflect on this milestone, they thank the many collaborators, team members, participants and partners who have helped develop and foster their research programs.
Congratulations to:
- Deakin Distinguished Professor Andrea Driscoll received the 2024 Victorian Public Healthcare Award-Partnering in Healthcare for the I-HEART project, developed between Austin Health and Swan Hill District Health. A collaborative partnership was developed between Swan Hill District Health, Austin Health and Deakin University to improve access to specialist heart failure services and facilitate care closer to home. A co-design approach was used to develop clinical decision tools and a virtual clinic for post-discharge follow up with heart failure specialists. This partnership reduced rehospitalisations and mortality in patients residing in Swan Hill.
- Professor Rochelle Wynne received a Fellowship in the European Society of Cardiology, awarded to healthcare professionals who made a significant contribution to cardiology
- Tarryn Armour received “Best presentation” at the Australian College of Perioperative Nurses (ACORN) conference for ‘Developing and evaluating a virtual simulation in a postgraduate peranaesthesia unit’
IHT Partner and Consumer Involvement Grants outcomes
Co-design workshop for evaluation of refugee with disability video resources by Angela Dew.
Our aim was to hear from representatives of the Karen and Afghan communities living and working in Bendigo who have experience accessing disability and other support systems, to ascertain their views about the appropriateness of already co-designed videos. We achieved this through running two sessions (one for each community group) in a workshop setting. Each session was facilitated by a bi-cultural/bi-lingual worker involved with those communities. The videos were played for each group and discussion ensued around the appropriateness of the videos for each community. The feedback on the videos has been fed back to the organisations (Foundation House and NSW Refugee Health Service) which are funding the translation of the videos from Arabic to other community languages including Karen and Dari.
The benefits we anticipated were to build a new partnership with the Bendigo Community Health, Refugee Resettlement Program to extend our previous research to include members of the Karen and Afghan communities living in this rural area. The workshop was very successful in this regard, and we have followed this up with discussion and a plan to submit a grant application to the VicHealth Impact grant round due 31 January 2025.
Addressing Commercial Health-determinants: Indigenous Empowerment and Voices for Equity (ACHIEVE) End of Year Gathering
We held our ACHIEVE end of year gathering event at Deakin Downtown to bring together our ACHIEVE research team and partners from the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (ACCHO) sector (national and state Aboriginal health peak bodies from across Australia) to report on the ACHIEVE study activities completed in 2024 and plan and develop our research partnership projects for 2025. The event was MC’d by senior Aboriginal researcher Prof. Yin Paradies and included a yarning circle with our ACCHO partner organisations (facilitated by two Aboriginal members of the team and an interactive planning session using Miro. We also launched our new project artwork.
Partner organisations mentioned that they enjoyed the event and appreciated being invited to participate:
“Thanks to you and the team for having me down at the ACHIEVE Gathering last week. Was great to meet everyone in person, and to hear the progress on the each of the streams. Very excited to see how we can be involved in the research projects throughout next year.”
Generally the event was a resounding success. It was an excellent way to engage partner organisations into the project as well as team members from other institutions. Unfortunately we weren’t able to have all partners attend but those that did expressed that they really appreciated the opportunity.
If you’re interested in applying for an IHT Partner and Consumer Involvement Grant in 2025, the grant guidelines and application form are available on the funding page on the IHT members portal.
Recent Conference presentations
Supporting better outcomes for people who use drugs by Bianca Whiteside
As I tentatively moved into my third year of my PhD, I was fortunate to attend two international conferences in October 2024: financially supported by my Deakin DUPR scholarship. First stop, Athens, Greece, then on to Lisbon, Portugal.
The 12th International Network on Health and Hepatitis in Substance Users (INHSU) conference was held at the Megaron International Conference Centre in Athens, Greece from 8-11 October. Our work, Public Amenity and the North Richmond medically supervised injecting room: 24-months of structured observations, was fortunate enough to be chosen for a poster presentation. There was a substantial interest in this work from national and international colleagues working in this space as a project of this scope has not been undertaken previously.
After a short break on the Greek island of Crete, I flew to Lisbon, Portugal, for the bi-annual Lisbon Addictions conference at the Centro de Congressos de Lisboa, 23-25 October. It was here that I was allowed the opportunity to present the findings of our scoping review that sought (unsuccessfully) to discover a definition of public amenity in drug consumption room (DCR) literature; as a result, we proposed the adoption of consistent term (drug-related public amenity), definition, and variables to support DCR research moving forward. This presentation received considerable interest, particularly from international colleagues, one who had “wished we had seen your work before we designed our evaluation protocol”.
Both conferences focused on illicit drug use and the peers, academics, and workforce that support better outcomes for people who use drugs. However, both conferences were considerably different. While the INSHU conference had a perceived even split between academics and people with lived and living experience of drug use – a total of 677 delegates from 60 countries – presentations, discussion spaces, and posters, sparked crucial discussion on hepatitis C equity, needle and syringe program (NSP) scale up, drug policy, and harm reduction. Meanwhile, Addictions, with the theme of “Empowering the workforce of the future” was heavily focused on those in academia and addictions workforce. The conference attracted over 2200 delegates from more than 100 countries and ran 16 (!) concurrent sessions covering a wide range of topics related to addiction.
The size of the INHSU conference created a sense of intimacy, particularly in the discussion spaces. One of the highlights of the conference, “From stigma to strength: How to create a safe space for storytelling”, provided an engaging panel that included Carla Treloar (UNSW) and Sarah Whipple (Yuba Harm Reduction Collective, U.S.) resulting in a rich discussion from panelists and delegates (Image 1). In contrast, Addictions offered a cornucopia of choices which personally resulted in a serious case of FOMO. Highlights included Wednesday afternoon’s Big Debate, “Why are we not doing better at reducing drug-related deaths?” (Thomas Clausen – Norwegian Centre for Addiction Research, Marie Jauffret-Roustide – French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Keith Humphreys – Stanford University, Paul Dietze – Burnet Institute, and Katri Abel-Ollo – Estonian National Institute for Health Development) (Image 2) and “Women’s realities of drug use” session led by Elena Hedoux (Pompidou Group) and featuring Marie Jauffret-Roustide’s (FNIHMR) presentation on “Gender and drugs: Experiences of stigma/toxicophobia and narcofeminist narratives”.
The opportunity to attend both of these conferences allowed for some fantastic networking with colleagues working in the DCR space, turning my mind into what is happening in the world of harm reduction research, and beyond, and eating some of the best food on the planet. Oh…and the cats…
Thank you to Health and Social Development HDR for funding this trip. I would also like to acknowledge the endless support of my Deakin supervisors, A/Prof Matthew Dunn and A/Prof Fiona McKay who have continued to show me the endless possibilities of research (provided funding is available).
Please contact bianca.whiteside@deakin.edu.au if you have any questions on the work presented, the conferences, or where to get the BEST pastel di nata in Lisbon.
Go back to the February 25 Newsletter
