Chronic conditions, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic breathlessness, diabetes, and arthritis have a significant impact on the lives of individuals, families, and communities. Our focus is on interdisciplinary collaborative research that improves the quality of life of people with living with chronic illness.

Living with chronic illness commonly requires people to make difficult decisions about treatment options, lifestyle changes, and engage in self-management strategies.

At IMPACCT, we undertake research and health services planning to help individuals and their families cope with these challenges. The research includes the design, implementation and management of clinical trials focusing on health services, symptom management, and evaluation of interventions to improve outcomes for individuals with chronic illness.

This research is conducted in collaboration with the Palliative Care Clinical Studies Collaborative (PaCCSC) and Cancer Symptom Trials (CST).

For any enquiries about our projects, please contact us.

Research in action: Chronic disease

Research in action: Chronic disease

Research in action: Chronic disease transcript

Prof Angela Dawson: Welcome to the Faculty of Health here at the University of Technology, Sydney. Our research on chronic disease focuses on interdisciplinary collaborative research, optimising the health and wellbeing of individuals living with life-limiting illnesses.

Prof David Sibbritt: Usually with chronic illness, we might think of someone who's got asthma or someone who's got arthritis, people who've had a stroke. They may have problems communicating, mental health problems as well. So there's quite a range of things that can happen after someone has been diagnosed with a chronic illness.

A/Prof Emma Power: A large part of my research is developing assessments and treatments so that people with brain injury and stroke can live successful lives, but their families can also live successful lives.

A/Prof Cristina Caperchione: We're starting to see this direct connection between physical activity in many chronic diseases, specifically cancers, stroke, dementia, diabetes, Type 2 Diabetes. So being active, just that minimal amount can have such a major impact on the larger population.

Dr Tim Luckett: My research is unusual in that I'm trying to learn from expert patients. You wouldn't believe how some people are able to really get every ounce of enjoyment out of life when they're hardly able to walk to the bathroom. So these are people who are really good at self-managing the most difficult symptom. They really have so much to teach us.

Dr Kamal Dua: There are three main areas in which my laboratory work, one is asthma, COPD, and lung cancer. I work on developing quite a number of novel drug delivery system, which are called nanoparticles. They're the tiny ball of polymers in which we encapsulate the drug. And that drug actually can release for a longer period of time in the body. It means the patients need not have to take multiple dosing. There would be a better patient compliance, lesser side effects, and better targeted effects.

A/Prof Emma Power: Imagine having a loved one who suddenly couldn't communicate. It would be really, really difficult. And we know that a lot of people are in that situation. So over the years, we've found really positive outcomes from our work in training communication partners. They've been able to improve their skills, which has improved the communication of the person with brain injury or stroke and their relationships.

A/Prof Cristina Caperchione: One of the really unique things about my work is that we always go in with the agenda of co-design, co-delivery, co-evaluation. And that's really important because if these communities feel that they have some ownership, if they feel that they have some autonomy in making decisions about what they're going to do, then they're more likely to engage, to participate, and to sustain that behaviour.

Dr Kamal Dua: These chronic respiratory diseases will just keep rising every single day. It's a time for us to look into that so that we have a suitable treatment across the globe to cut down the level of the financial burden and the healthcare burden because of such diseases.

A/Prof Emma Power: What I want people to recognise is that we can improve the lives of people with brain injury and stroke, and that research actually is one of the key solutions. With partnerships and funding, of course, we can actually make a difference.

Prof David Sibbritt: There's quite a wealth of information that will be collected by us that opens the door to such a huge range of research. PhD students or early career researchers will have this wonderful resource available to them, and then they can grow their research career off the back of this resource.

Current projects

Cardiovascular disease

Chronic Breathlessness

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