NARI receives $3.5m in grants to continue vital research

The National Ageing Research Institute (NARI) has received four funding grants from the Australian Government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) in order to support the delivery of better health outcomes for older Australians.

The MRFF’s 2022 grants included a combined total of over $3.5 million for a number of NARI projects — IDC-IMPROVE, MindCare, BEFRIENDING with GENIE and Move Together.

The IDC-IMPROVE project was awarded funds from the Clinician Researchers: Nurses, Midwives and Allied Health Grant Category. It will focus on the co-design, implementation and evaluation of a care bundle to improve indwelling catheter care (IDC) in residential aged care homes, led by NARI Director of Aged Care Research Professor Joan Ostaszkiewicz.

According to NARI, current international estimates suggest up to 8% of people in residential aged care homes have a long-term indwelling urinary catheter, despite evidence that extended use is associated with significant morbidity and mortality.

“Aged care residents with an IDC are three times more likely to die within a year than those without an IDC, and the number of admissions to emergency departments and hospital is also far higher — it’s unacceptable. With the right strategies and practices in place, this discrepancy can be addressed,” Ostaszkiewicz said.

“This funding will allow us to undertake truly vital research, led by experienced nurses and focused on translating best practice guidelines for the management of IDCs into practice in Australian residential aged care homes.

“This research can save lives, and this grant is crucial to making that possible.”

Two of the funded projects, MindCare and BEFRIENDING with GENIE, will focus on people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds who are living with dementia, and their carers.

The MindCare project, funded from the Consumer-Led Research category, aims to raise self-efficacy and health literacy by improving knowledge of modifiable lifestyle factors that can reduce the risk of developing dementia.

There are just under half a million Australians currently living with dementia and, of this figure, one in three was born overseas.

“Every step of this project will be informed by, and produced with, our end users. We will develop a dementia risk reduction educational program, designed to be adapted into Australia’s multicultural context for delivery by community educators,” said Chief Investigator Dr Josefine Antoniades.

“These resources will provide essential information to culturally and linguistically diverse communities throughout Australia. As figures continue to increase, it’s more vital than ever that dementia education is inclusive of non-English speaking communities.”

BEFRIENDING with GENIE, led by Edith Cowan University’s Professor Loretta Baldassar in partnership with NARI researchers Professor Colleen Doyle, Professor Bianca Brijnath and Dr Anita Goh, is an intervention to reduce loneliness and increase social support and service access for people living with dementia and their caregivers from CALD backgrounds.

It combines NARI’s successful BEFRIENDING program with a proven online social support network and engagement tool (GENIE), and will be piloted with 100 participants living in four states.

“We know that one in four older Australians experience feelings of loneliness, and for people with dementia who are from a multicultural background, it can be a particularly isolating experience,” said Brijnath, who serves as NARI Director of Social Gerontology.

“Being separated from culture by distance or because of health circumstances can be incredibly traumatic, and have adverse impacts on health outcomes.

“This program fosters real connections, reducing feelings of loneliness, and is a vital step towards providing wraparound support to culturally and linguistically diverse people who are living with dementia, and their carers.”

Falls are the second leading cause of disability in older people, but despite strong evidence that regular exercise can reduce the occurrence of falls, many older people do not do sufficient exercise to minimise their risk.

MRFF funding will enable a pilot trial of the Move Together project, led by The University of Melbourne’s Associate Professor Cathy Said with support from NARI Director of Clinical Gerontology Associate Professor Frances Batchelor, which aims to increase the uptake of exercise to reduce falls in older people from Italian, Arab and Chinese communities.

NARI Executive Director Professor Briony Dow said the MRFF funding will strengthen the institute’s capacity for undertaking life-changing research.

“This investment will allow NARI, as the national leader in aging research, to produce evidence, tools and resources designed to improve health and aged care systems, and implement best practice public policy in the health and aged care sector,” Dow said.

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