Monday 21 October 2019 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Health Transformation Lab, Level 2, 155 Pelham St, Carlton, VIC 3053

Register for this event here

A partnership with the Health Transformation Lab and School of Art Creative Care:

Professor Carol Tishelman and PhD student Max Kleijberg, from Karolinska Institutet Division of Innovative Care, will discuss a program of end-of-life research within the Swedish context. Carol leads the DöBra (a pun meaning both ‘dying well’ and ‘awesome’ in Swedish) program, which is a cohesive national transdisciplinary research program. The DöBra research program aims to investigate how culture, the environment and conversation can promote constructive change and support better quality of life and death among the general population, in specific subgroups and in interventions directed to staff caring for dying individuals, their friends and families. DöBra uses ideas from new public health and the Ottawa Charter as umbrella theoretical frameworks and participatory action research as an overarching methodological approach, working with a range of projects in different settings to combine stringent research with sustainable change processes. In DöBra, we work in partnership with stakeholders and researchers with a wide variety of backgrounds in health care science, social sciences, humanities and creative practices. Carol will present the background to the program, its individual components, and discuss some of the challenges and possibilities encountered that may be relevant for the Australian context. Max will discuss his application of art and action research in the DöBra research program.

Professor Carol Tishelman is Professor of Innovative Care, at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. This position is a joint position with employment at the Centre for Rural Medicine in the remote north part of the country, as well as with the Stockholm health care services.

Carol grew up in the Bronx, New York, has a background in women’s studies, and received a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. She has lived in Sweden most of her adult life and has worked at Karolinska Institutet, where she also received her PhD, since the mid-1980s. Carol instituted a research group in Innovative Care Research through an Endowed chair as Professor of Innovative Care funded by Investor AB (October 2014-Sept 2019) , and now co-leads the group, which has now grown to a Division. Carol has conducted research in palliative care for several decades, and leads the national competitively-funded DöBra research program in Sweden, aimed at integrating palliative care, public health and health promotion. She has been on the steering board of major international organizations in her field, i.e. International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care, the European Society for Psychosocial Oncology and the European Association for Palliative Care. She is recently become the 2nd registered nurse elected to Academia Europeaea ( equivalent of a European academy of arts and sciences).Carol has received competitive funding from a range of national agencies and has led major national and international projects in a variety of areas related to nursing, (e.g the Swedish component of the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership on awareness, attitudes and beliefs about cancer in the population, and Swedish PI for the EU 7th framework financed RN4CAST project, on nurse workforce issues).

Max Kleijberg is a PhD student in Sweden at Karolinska Institutet, at the Division of Innovative Care Research in the DöBra research program. Max is originally from the Netherlands and has a design background with experience in working with innovation and social entrepreneurship projects in transdisciplinary groups. His PhD research is a participatory action research project aiming to support community engagement in end-of-life issues. Max collaborates with various community-organizations to develop Studio DöBra: places where children and elderly people can meet and work together on the theme of death and loss through art projects.

Healthtalk Australia mental health resources to be included on Head to Health website

Healthtalk Australia is an online resource dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of Australians by harnessing the power of stories, rigorous research methods, and the internet to understand and share experiences of:

• what it’s really like to have a particular health condition or to care for someone with that condition, and
• what is and isn’t working in our health and social care system.

The only research-based digital repository of health experiences in Australia, Healthtalk Australia’s resources provide support and information to other patients and carers, and information to health professionals and health educators.

HASH network members Renata Kokanović, (Healthtalk Australia Director) and Kate Johnston-Ataata (Healthtalk Australia Co-ordinator) learned recently that four of their mental health digital resources on mental health and supported decision-making, mental health and carers’ experiences, depression, and emotional experiences of early parenthood have been approved for inclusion on Head to Health.

Head to Health is a national digital platform providing links to credible, high quality Australian digital and phone supports, resources and treatment options for mental health, and is working towards establishing a national certification framework for digital mental health services.

Currently Healthtalk Australia is one of only 33 organisations nation-wide listed on the Head to Health platform. Testament to the high quality of Healthtalk Australia’s digital repository of health experiences, Healthtalk Australia’s mental health resources received written support and endorsement from key stakeholder and project partner, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services as part of the application process.

HASH Network researchers, Renata Kokanović and Kate Johnston-Ataata, are part of a new NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence on Women’s Health in Reproductive Life

Renata and Kate from the Social Research in Health Program (Social and Global Studies Centre, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University) are set to continue their research collaboration on women’s experiences of reproductive health with the Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation (MCHRI), Monash University. Renata is an Associate Investigator and Kate a Research Fellow on the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence on Women’s Health in Reproductive Life (WHIRL) announced on 29 August 2019.

A five-year, $2.499 million research program, CRE-WHIRL is aimed at improving health outcomes and quality of life in key areas of women’s reproductive health – Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), infertility and early menopause. The CRE-WHIRL will partner with patients, multidisciplinary practitioners and policy makers to address research and translation priorities under the national women’s health strategy. Renata and Kate’s involvement in CRE – WHIRL builds on their existing collaboration with MCHRI through the Early Menopause: Women’s Experiences and Health Practitioners’ Perspectives NHMRC Partnership Project.