NARI receives $3.5m funding grants for better health outcomes for older Australians

NARI has received over $3.5 million in funding from the MRFF to support four research projects aimed at improving the health outcomes of older Australians.

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

The combined total of over $3.5 million will be allocated to a number of NARI projects, including IDC-IMPROVE, MindCare, BEFRIENDING with GENIE and Move Together. 

The IDC-IMPROVE project, led by NARI Director of Aged Care Research, Professor Joan Ostaszkiewicz, will focus on improving the care of residents with an indwelling catheter in residential aged care homes that aims to co-design, implement, and evaluate a care bundle that translates best practice guidelines for managing indwelling urinary catheters into practice in residential aged care homes. 

MindCare and BEFRIENDING with GENIE projects aim to improve the lives of people from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds living with dementia and their carers. The MindCare project will develop a dementia risk reduction educational program that is adapted into Australia’s multicultural context for delivery by community educators. Meanwhile, BEFRIENDING with GENIE, an intervention to reduce loneliness and increase social support and service access for people living with dementia and their caregivers from CALD backgrounds will pilot with 100 participants living in four states. 

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

According to NARI Executive Director Professor Briony Dow, the MRFF funding will strengthen the Institute’s capacity to undertake life-changing research. The Institute is a national leader in ageing research and aims to improve health and aged care systems and implement best practices in public policy in the health and aged care sector. 

MRFF funding has opened up new opportunities for NARI to conduct crucial research that could save lives and improve the quality of life for older Australians. NARI expressed its gratitude to the Medical Research Future Fund and its partners for continuing to support the Institute’s important work.

Ritchelle Drilon

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Ritchelle is a Content Producer for Healthcare Channel, Australia’s premier resource of information for healthcare.

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