St Vincent’s awarded major research grant 

St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne’s ED Research Unit is part of a collaborative project team led by Deakin University that was recently awarded a Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) grant to investigate improving survivorship care for victims of domestic violence. 

The MRFF grant totalling almost $2 million was provided through the 2024 Survivorship Care and Collaborative Research Prioritisation scheme to improve survivorship care for victim-survivors who have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) due to violence.  

This grant will support a Phase 1 Clinical Trial where SVHM will be a lead site, and is one the project’s lead partners. 

The trial aims to assess a three-year project to deploy ASPIRE, a world-first digital health platform that aims to improve the physical and psychological long-term outcomes of victim-survivors with TBI, while simultaneously reducing the associated healthcare costs across the Australian community. 

“We know that people who have concussions as a result of a TBI can have long-term issues – many experience issues with memory and concentration and struggle just going about their daily activities,” said Associate Professor Hamed Akhlaghi, Head of Emergency Medicine Research and the study’s Principal Investigator at SVHM.  

The ASPIRE platform aims to better assist patients and healthcare professionals in monitoring cognitive and mental health symptoms, tracking brain injuries, providing tailored intervention recommendations, planning for follow-up assessments and offering relevant wellbeing information. 

Pictured: Associate Professor Hamed Akhlaghi 

Addressing a critical need 
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 40 percent of people in Australia experience at least one incident of violence from the age of 15. 

Each year, SVHM’s Emergency Department treats about 335 assault victims, with around 25 percent likely to have a TBI.  

Despite these high rates, appropriate survivorship care and effective therapeutic interventions are lacking. 

A/Prof Akhlaghi said that until now there has been limited research into the impact of TBIs on domestic violence survivors and their recovery process. 

“This project will assess a program aimed at delivering a more effective and efficient way to manage the follow-up care of assault survivors through a centralised platform that captures the psychosocial and mental health of the patients longitudinally and inform biomarkers related to the severity of the injury,” he added. 

One of the key study goals is to identify those at high risk of long-term health and psychosocial issues and explore providing targeted care and tailored treatment to enhance recovery. 

“If we are able to identify them at an earlier stage, maybe we can have a better outcome at the end,” said A/Prof Akhlaghi. 

This multi-site, nation-wide project is currently in early stages of development, with work now underway to progress ethics and study protocols.  

The trial also marks one of the first attempts in Australia to integrate digital health solutions into the long-term care of TBI survivors in the context of domestic violence. 

“We are proud to be at the forefront of this important research. This collaboration reflects our commitment to advancing evidence-based care and improving long-term outcomes for survivors of violence who are often overlooked” said A/Prof Akhlaghi. 

This collaborative research project is being led by Professor Karen Caeyenberghs, Head of the Neuroplasticity and Multimodal Imaging Lab at the Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, School of Psychology, Deakin University.