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January 2012
Grants roundup: $2.5m for new centre to prevent chronic conditions
A grant to establish a Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) for the Prevention of Chronic Conditions in remote and rural communities leads an impressive list of funding success for Sansom Institute researchers in the latest annual roundup of competitive grants.

Professor Robyn McDermott has secured funding of $2.5 million over four years for the CRE, in partnership with the Aboriginal Health Council of South Australia, Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council, the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and James Cook University.

The Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute (APHCRI) is funding the CRE, which will evaluate models for primary health care services for Indigenous and other high risk groups in rural and remote areas.

The focus will be on improving service delivery regarding the prevention and management of chronic diseases such as diabetes, renal and heart conditions, and mental ill-health, as well as the complications arising from these.

Other Sansom research projects and academics (highlighted) that received grants in 2011 were:

NHMRC
Project Grants administered by UniSA:
Dr Michael Sorich, Professor Ross McKinnon, Associate Professor Michael Coory, Brita Pekarski: Can decision analytic modelling promote clinical translation of personalised medicine markers for oncology drugs? ($68,725)
Dr Paul Anderson, Professor Howard Morris, Dr Andrew Turner, Associate Professor Gerald Atkins: Vitamin D synthesis within osteoblasts increases bone mineral by regulating remodelling: Is this the link between Vitamin D status and fractures? ($606,010)
Dr Grant Brinkworth, Associate Professor Manny Noakes, Associate Professor Jon Buckley, Professor Campbell Thompson, Dr Natalie Luscombe-Marsh, Professor Carlene Wilson: Long-term effects of a very low carbohydrate, low saturated fat diet compared to a conventional high carbohydrate, low fat diet on glycemic control and cardiovascular disease risk in overweight and obese patients with type 2 diabetes. ($1,267,290)
Dr Janna Morrison, Associate Professor Sandy Orgeig: Optimising lung surfactant protein production in the IUGR fetus at risk of preterm delivery ($448,675)
Administered through other institutions:
Professor Gary Wittert, Professor Bu Yeap, Dr Mathis Grossman, Dr Carolyn Allan, Professor Robert McLachlan, Associate Professor Ann Conway, Dr Joey Kaye, Associate Professor Alicia Jenkins, Professor Mark Daniel: Testosterone intervention for the prevention of diabetes mellitus in high risk men: a randomised trial. ($4,822,905)
Dr Kerrilyn Diener: The consequences of innate immune inflammatory responses during early pregnancy and their effect on reproductive outcomes. ($356,175)

ARC
Linkage Grants administered through UniSA:
Dr John Hayball, Kylie Sproston, Associate Professor Marianne Chapman: The development of a potent new passive immunotherapeutic for the treatment and prevention of bacterial sepsis and septic shock ($183,000)
Partner Organisations: BTG Australasia Pty Ltd, Royal Adelaide Hospital

Professor Cory Xian, Professor Howard Morris, Christopher Gregory: Towards a cost-effective therapy for osteoporosis using Australian indigenous emu oil ($300,000)
Partner Organisation: Emu Tracks Australasia Pty Ltd

Discovery Grants
Administered by UniSA:
Professor Mark Daniel, Professor Ross Bailie, Dr Margaret Cargo, Dr Catherine Paquet, Professor Alex Brown, Associate Professor Sharon Bruce: Investigating social, built and physical environment factors for remote Indigenous communities, and their relationships with cardiometabolic outcomes. ($219,000)
Administered through other institutions:
Associate Professor Zhi Ping Xu, Associate Professor Andrei Zvyagin, Professor Michael Roberts: Skin penetration of nanoparticles promoted by particle design, formulation and application method. ($360,000)

Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation
Professor Jason White: Does Stimulant Medication Cause Brain Damage in Children? ($72,000)
Dr James Dollman: Exploring predictors of physical activity attrition and maintenance among females in early adolescence. ($56,000)

Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Jean Caron, Ph.D., Anne G. Crocker, Ph.D., Mark Daniel, Ph.D., Marie-Josée Fleury, Yan Kestens, Ph.D., Norbert Schmitz, Ph.D : The CIHR Team in Social and Psychiatric: Epidemiology and the development of an Epidemiological Catchment Area in the South. West of Montreal: An extension of the longitudinal study on mental health and an investigation of its comorbidity with physical health. ($1,744,470)
Katherine L. Frohlich, Thomas Abel, Paul Bernard, Mark Daniel, Clément Dassa, Geetanjali Datta, Yan Kestens, Bernard-Simon Leclerc, Jennifer O'Loughlin, Louise Potvin, Martine Shareck: Interdisciplinary study of inequalities in smoking (ISIS). ($556,360)
Sharon Bruce, Mark Daniel, Barry Lavallee, Lawrence Elliott, Mahmoud Torabi, Natalie Riediger, Garry Shen, Miyoung Suh: Exploring the role of established and non-traditional risk factors on diabetes and cardiovascular disease among a Manitoba First Nation population. ($524,184)
Australian Department of Health and Aging
Dr Matt Haren, Professor Mark Daniel, Dr Siobhan Banks, Associate Professor Gary Misan, Associate Professor John Buckley, Professor Peter Howe: iWhyalla: Intervention Whyalla – A workplace-based obesity and diabetes primary and secondary prevention trial. ($100,000)

Heart Foundation Grant-in-Aid
Dr Michael Sorich, Professor John Horowitz, Professor Jonathan Karnon, Professor Ross McKinnon, Associate Professor Michael Coory: Assessing of the value of the confirmatory studies required for the widespread uptake of personalised cardiovascular medicine. ($64,602)
Associate Professor Janna Morrison, Professor Douglas Brooks, Professor Kent Thornburg, Professor Jens Nyengaard: Intrauterine growth restriction and the programming of heart growth and development. ($120,000)

Other grants
A consortium headed by McKinsey and Company Australia and including Professor Robyn McDermott, Professor Adrian Esterman and Professor Leonie Segal won a tender put out by the Commonwealth  Department of Health to run a pilot coordinated care trial for diabetes in Australia.

Professor Nicholas Proctor is part of a national consortium that secured a $2.7 m multicultural project in mental health promotion and suicide prevention (consortium members include UniSA, the University of Melbourne and the Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit and Queensland Health)

Dr Talitha Best was awarded a Researchers in Business grant through the Australian Government's Enterprise Connect initiative.

Associate Professor Jon Buckley, Professor Peter Howe, Dr Alison Coates, Dr Janet Bryan and Dr Alison Hill won a $120,000 grant from the Grains Research and Development Corporation to examine the health effects of increased consumption of pulses.

Dr Rasika Jayasekara and Marija Juraja were successful in a tender with NHMRC for $34,000 to develop a guide on infection prevention and control in residential aged care and community care settings.

Fellowships
NHMRC:
Translating Research into Practice Fellowship: Dr Susan Thomas (2 years)
Early Career Fellowship: Dr Nicole Pratt (3 years)
Career Development Fellowship: Associate Professor Leanne Dibbens (3 years)
Cancer Council SA and SA Health
Senior Cancer Research Fellowship: Professor Ross Butler (3 years)
Heart Foundation and SA Health
SA Cardiovascular Research Development Program Fellowship: Dr Jim Dollman (3 years)
Heart Foundation
Fellowship: Dr Rebecca Golley (3 years

Tall Poppies SA finalists:
Neuroscientist Dr Michelle McDonnell (NRC, Allied Health Evidence)
Biomedical expert Dr Roger Yazbek (PMB, Mechanisms in Cell Biology and Diseases)
Health scientist Dr Grant Tomkinson (HLS, Health and Use of Time)
Cardiovascular nutrition expert Dr Alison Hill (HLS)

Other awards:
South Australian Science Excellence Awards
Dr Natalie Sinn won the Early Career STEM professional category in health and life science:
Dr Sarah List was a finalist in the category Early Career STEM educator of the Year.

Professor Andrew Gilbert was named the 2011 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia's Excellence Awards.

Dr Olasumbo Ndi was awarded an African Chamber of Commerce of SA National Award for excellence in science for her work into antibiotic resistance and food-bourne disease.

May 2011
Quality indicators: are we on the right track?
Around the world, quality indicators in health – that is, data comparing everything from mortality rates in different hospitals to the efficacy of prescribing practices – are becoming increasingly accessible to everyone from patients to policy makers and insurers.

While greater transparency and accountability in health care seem worthy enough goals, the question of whether quality indicators actually help achieve this – and, ultimately whether they result in better health outcomes – was raised by visiting researcher Professor Flora Haaijer-Ruskamp at a recent Sansom Institute Seminar.

A professor in Drug Utilization Studies at the University of Groningen, Haaijer-Ruskamp visited UniSA as a special guest of the Institute’s Quality Use of Medicines and Pharmacy Research Centre (QUMPRC).

Discussing numerous international examples highlighting some of the benefits – and unintended consequences – of the use of quality indicators, Prof Haaijer-Ruskamp argued for ongoing critical scrutiny to ensure that QIs actually support better health outcomes.

Citing a major US study from 2010, she said that while the impact of publicly-available data comparing hospitals found that greater scrutiny did help lift some standards in low-performing areas, that one of the unintended consequences of public reporting was health care providers refusing to care for high risk patients.

Meanwhile a recent UK study cited by Prof Haaijer-Ruskamp found that while a pay-for-performance scheme resulted in improvements in two out of three chronic conditions examined, such improvements may have come at the expense of other areas where quality of care had actually decreased.
“There’s a high investment in using these new quality indicators, but limited evidence surrounding their effect on patient outcomes,” Haaijer-Ruskamp said.

“However, there is a lot of evidence for educational PI’s [performance indicators] working, so I don’t think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

Professor Haaijer-Ruskamp made the point that policy makers and researchers should be aware of the limitations of QIs and work to refine them so that they take into account elements that are currently missing, such as patient preferences, or complex patients with multi-morbidity.

April 2011
New expertise welcomed

In line with our mission to support research with a purpose linked to better health outcomes, the Sansom Institute has welcomed a host of established research talent to the fold. 

Researchers that have recently joined the Institute are engaged in an exciting range of cutting edge studies looking at areas ranging from opioids to lung physiology and health and use of time.

The Health and Use of Time concentration brings to the Sansom a diverse group of scientists to look at how factors such as physical activity, sleep and screen time affect our physical, mental and social health.

Joining the Institute as part of the Therapeutics and Pharmaceutical Science concentration, the Drugs of Dependence research group conducts trials examining the effects of a wide range of drugs, particularly opioids, stimulants and drugs that work on the central nervous system.

Meanwhile, the Molecular and Evolutionary Physiology of the Lung Laboratory is working towards achieving a wide range of important health care goals, from better care for premature babies and their mothers, to improved treatments for respiratory disease, and preventing the spread of infectious diseases such as avian flu.

Watch this space: new pages coming soon on nursing, midwifery and mental health.

March 2011
Sansom researcher Dr Craig Williams on the big screen

The Sansom’s resident mosquito expert, Dr Craig Williams, is one of a select group of academics to be featured in a new initiative highlighting the personalities and passions of some of UniSA’s research and teaching staff.

As part of the Learn from Experience initiative, short films featuring Craig and five other UniSA academics were screened as part of the recent BigPond Adelaide Film Festival. Watch the film here.

The twelve short films and associated materials will be featured in a variety of cinema, TV, print and web-based formats throughout the year.

Craig, who talks in the film about his inspiration as a teacher and researcher, says he was honoured to be part of the initiative.

“I was surprised and humbled to be asked, especially seeing as there are so many people – people who are extremely interesting and do really important work – who could have been featured,” he says.   

February 2010
UniSA wins funding to tackle Indigenous diabetes and cardiovascular epidemic

The National Health and Medical Research Council has awarded researchers at UniSA a prestigious Program Grant to support research into the causes, appropriate interventions and health system changes that will help reduce the incidence and adverse health impacts of diabetes and cardiovascular disease in Indigenous populations.

Lead investigator and Director of UniSA’s Sansom Institute for Health Research, Professor Kerin O’Dea and her UniSA colleagues Professors Robyn McDermott, John Lynch, and Leonie Segal, with Kevin Rowley from the University of Melbourne have been awarded more than $8 million over five years.
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