Bulletin #0096
AUTUMN 2019
It takes a community to fight diseases Participation from the community continues to play a huge role in many Menzies studies, helping us gain a better understanding of disease causes, treatments and prevention. Since the 1980s and 90s, when more than 10,000 mothers and babies participated in one of Menzies’ first research projects – investigating the relationship between babies’ sleeping positions and SIDS – the Tasmanian community’s willingness to be involved in our research has helped to drive our success. More than 30 years later we still rely on research participation from the community for many of our studies. We are a bigger and more diverse institute now, and our partnership with the community is more vital than ever. Menzies has scores of projects running at any one time. Many of these are laboratory-based and don’t require participation from the community, but at the moment at least 15 projects are recruiting participants. Research projects are designed
CLINICAL TRIALS DAY
Helping hand: Some of the Menzies study co-ordinators who keep the many projects in our musculoskeletal area running smoothly - Gudrun Wells, Kate Probert, Lizzy Reid, Kate Butorac, Carole Goff and Kathy Buttigieg.
in a very specific way and therefore participants typically need to meet particular criteria relating to their age, health and medical history. In some cases people are connected to research projects for years or even decades. For example, Menzies’ Childhood Determinants of Adult Health study has followed up the same participants three times in the
Our partnership with the community is more vital than ever. past 30 years. In longitudinal studies such as this, our challenge is not to find new participants but to stay in touch with the cohort we have so that we can collect and correlate data over a lifetime. Another very significant study for us involving participants was the ASPREE study (ASPirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly), which involved more than 2000 Tasmanians.
Clinical Trials Day is celebrated on May 20 to raise awareness of the contribution made by volunteering for medical research. The date celebrates what is often considered the first randomised clinical trial, by James Lind, who trialled whether citrus fruits helped to prevent scurvy aboard a ship in May 1747.
Other projects require more regular contact between participants and study coordinators. Sometimes these projects are clinical trials that are testing a hypothesis through an ‘intervention’ such as a therapeutic drug or surgical technique. Other examples of ‘interventions’ are behaviour modification, health service changes or health education programs. Whatever the project, all research participants are contributing to better understanding of the prevention, treatment and curing of diseases. On Page 6 of this Bulletin you will find a full list of the studies that Menzies is recruiting for, including the contact details for the study coordinators. All Menzies research projects involving participants are subject to strict ethical approval guided by the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Statement of Ethical Conduct in Human Research.
For further information and the full list of studies, see Page 6.
Menzies Bulletin Autumn 2019
1