Physiotherapy starts off 2024 with grant success

Fellowship successes include Prof Rana Hinman who was awarded an NHMRC Investigator Grant at the Leadership 2 level to further her work on improving lifestyle management of hip and knee osteoarthritis and Dr Natalie Fini awarded with an NHMRC Investigator Grant at the Emerging Leadership 1 level to continue her work on tailoring physical activity interventions for people with stroke. A/Prof Karen Donald was awarded her second University of Melbourne Dean’s Fellowship in Teaching and Learning to travel to the Canadian Institute of Social Prescribing in Toronto and Bromley by Bow centre in London, to learn more about innovation in social prescription models of care.

Recent MRFF grant successes

Prof Alicia Spittle, Dr Kate Cameron, Dr Free Coulston, Dr Tara FitzGerald, Prof Jill Francis and Dr Sanne Peters from MSHS, along with Dr Xinyang Hua (MSPGH), Dr Rheanna Mainzer (MCRI), Prof Jeanie Cheong (MMS), Prof Lex Doyle (MMS) and Prof Peter Anderson (Monash University) and consumers Maggie Lloyd and Loni Binstock have been awarded $1,189,267 from MRFF to conduct a randomised controlled trial titled 'Active-Prem: Enhancing exercise participation in early childhood for children born very preterm'.

A/Prof Stephanie Filbay, Prof Kim Bennell, Prof David Hunter, Dr Adam Culvenor, Prof Ian Harris, Prof Nadine Foster, Prof Rana Hinman, Dr An Tran-Duy and Dr Anurika De Silva have been awarded $1,725,343 from MRFF for a trial titled 'A novel non-surgical intervention to improve outcomes after anterior cruciate ligament injury: A multicentre randomised controlled trial.'

Two teams from physiotherapy were also successful in being awarded MDHS Innovation Seed Grants. The successful teams were led by A/Prof Kate Hayward for 'Standardising Competency in Outcomes of REcovery post-Stroke (SCORES)' and Dr Belinda Lawford for 'Developing a novel physical activity mobile app to enhance access to evidence-based care for people with lower limb osteoarthritis.'

Physiotherapy Graduate Researcher grant successes

Alisha Da Silva is a recipient of an Australian Physiotherapy Association Physiotherapy Research Fund grant and an Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Foundation grant. Alisha's projects will co-design a resource for people who have experienced critical illness and their families on post-intensive care syndrome and develop an online professional development toolkit for clinicians working with survivors of critical illness on post-intensive care syndrome.

Sara Issak is a recipient of an Epworth Medical Foundation Andrew Dobbyn and Stephanie Margolin Rehabilitation Research Grant for her project titled 'Phenotypes of gait in Functional Gait Disorder'.

Claire Laurie is a recipient of a Leslie Eric Paddle Scholarship in Orthopaedics. Claire's research is investigating the physical changes that children experience when they are being treated for musculoskeletal sarcoma with the goal of improving their recovery.

Evie Sloan is arecipient of an Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Foundation grant. The grant will be used to support a feasibility study of RESTORE-ICU, an evidence-based co-designed intervention for ICU survivors involving a telehealth exercise and cognitive behavioural therapy-informed self-management program.

Congratulations to all grant recipients and also to the teams that have supported them along the way!