Late Gestation Abortion

Late Gestation Abortion

Conducting abortions beyond 20 weeks gestation is known to result in complex health and psychosocial needs for the pregnant women. As there is only one Victorian service providing abortions at this gestational stage (Royal Women’s Hospital Abortion and Contraception Service), it is imperative that a high quality of care is provided for women and pregnant people accessing this service. This project will explore how women and people seeking abortions over 20 weeks experience this process and the subsequent care they receive.
In my Prime: Promoting positive images of older women

“Gendered ageism”, the combined effect of discrimination based on gender and age, most commonly affect older women owing to pervasive societal values that emphasise youth and physical appearance. Poor body image and ageism are known to directly impact health through reduced uptake of health screening, social isolation, eating disorders and reduced confidence, ultimately leading to accelerated physical and mental decline that shortens life expectancy. Education and intergenerational contact are key methods to reducing ageism; yet there remains a disconnect with the lack of diverse older women representation in today’s media.
CoMaND

Collecting high quality data is crucial to informing health care changes, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. CoMaND (Collaborative Maternity and Newborn Dashboard), an interactive digital data display, was created to provide rapid access to maternity and newborn data for clinical services, allowing MACH maternity partners to monitor the indirect impacts of the pandemic on the maternity population.
Be Sweet to Babies

Newborn blood screening tests are commonly performed using the heel lance procedure. Though understandably painful, high quality synthesised evidence reveals breastfeeding and skin-skin care (SSC) to have an analgesic effect for newborns. Unfortunately, these strategies are inconsistently used in practice for both healthy term newborns and preterm infants. There is need to investigate and address the barriers preventing this knowledge-to-action gap to reduce unnecessary pain during this procedure.
Multi-Omics in Diagnosis and Research of Inherited Rare Diseases

Inherited Rare Diseases affect thousands of Australians each year. Genomics (DNA sequencing) has transformed their diagnosis but about around half of cases remain unsolved. We have shown that omics methods that detect thousands of RNAs and proteins can boost the number of diagnoses markedly. We will explore translating these technologies to routine diagnostic use.
ID-Predict (Tuberculosis): Predicting recent Tuberculosis infection and future disease risk in Victorian TB contacts

Approximately 2 billion people (¼ of the world’s population), have been infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), and 5-10% of those will fall ill with Tuberculosis (TB). The risk of developing TB can be decreased by preventative therapy, however current diagnostic tests cannot determine which of the 2 billion people infected will be the 10 million people who progress to disease every 12 months.
Understanding how immune pressure shapes immune escape mechanisms in non-small cell lung cancer

Lung cancer is a devastating disease causing 1.8 million deaths worldwide every year. Immunotherapy has dramatically improved the survival of a small subset of lung cancer patients. We aim to identify new ways to improve response to immunotherapy by understanding the communication between tumour and immune cells. We use novel approaches that integrate spatial information with molecular and cellular data to achieve this goal.
Health Studies Australian National Data Asset (HeSANDA) program

The MACH Clinical Trials Consortium node aims to implement the objectives of the HeSANDA initiative throughout the consortium’s member institutions and its broader functioning environment by directly contributing to the building of the infrastructure and administrative requirements needed to support the sharing and reuse of clinical trial metadata.
VCHRI Models of Virtual Care for Older Adults

The models of virtual care project is funded by the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services to develop projects that contribute to the redesign and improvement of Victoria’s healthcare system, driving recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic through research-led innovation that aims to identify and assess the suitability of virtual care initiatives.
VCHRI Value in Care – optimising surveillance COLonoscopy (VIC-COL)

The VCHRI Value in Care project is a state-wide collaborative program of work shared between MACH, Monash Partners and Western Alliance that supports hospitals to optimise colonoscopy best practice and promote timely detection and treatment of bowel cancer.