Research

Stroke Foundation Research Report

The Stroke Foundation Research Program aims to support and translate high quality research that will lead to changes in practice, policy and knowledge resulting in prevention of stroke and improved quality of life for stroke survivors, their families and/or carers.

The Stroke Foundation supports stroke research in three different ways:

Funding annual research grants to promote stroke research capacity and generate new stroke knowledge
Building strong partnerships to improve stroke research outcomes
Leveraging all Stroke Foundation activities to deliver better outcomes for stroke care through research. This includes the consideration of work done in program planning and evaluation, better use of the extensive data held by the Stroke Foundation and a focus on research priority areas.

Following an extensive review, the Stroke Foundation has released its research strategy for 2015 - 2017. The strategy for the research program is outlined in The National Stroke Research Framework and Research Report and will enable the Stroke Foundation to continue to provide funding to researchers to undertake new work in the short term, but to also plan the focus for future efforts.

During this review, an environmental scan was conducted to map current activities and opportunities and to develop a list of possible priorities to be agreed by the Stroke Foundation’s Research Advisory Committee. As a result of this priority setting process, the Stroke Foundation has set the following priorities to guide research funding and activities in the 2015 to 2017 triennium.

2015 - 2017 Stroke Foundation Research Priorities

Improve transition of patients from the acute setting (care plans, education, lifestyle, medication) and improving long term follow up and support (information, follow up etc)
Bladder and bowel management (particularly in the acute phase)
Recognition and management of fatigue
Improving delivery of high quality stroke care (especially aspects of care in the Quality Standards, access to stroke units and tPA)
Technology related rehabilitation activity
Carer support

The Stroke Foundation is committed to supporting the latest evidence-based stroke prevention and treatment. The Stroke Foundation uses the latest research as a basis for all the programs it develops and runs. To support health professionals Stroke Foundation summarises and publishes the best research through the Clinical Guidelines for Stroke Management 2010. This research summary from the guidelines is then used to make sure all our consumer information is evidence-based.

The Stroke Foundation has a policy for managing requests from external researchers who would like to obtain access to consumers to participate in their stroke related research project. Although the Stroke Foundation can endeavour to assist with the recruitment of participants to take part in research projects and studies, we cannot guarantee securing participants.

The Stroke Foundation will consider developing Partnership Grants with applications from academic institutions. These must outline genuine partnerships, that are developed jointly and address shared priorities. They must be submitted for discussion and decision by the Stroke Foundation Research Advisory Committee at least 4 weeks before applications close to allow adequate time for shared development.

Interested research groups are asked to provide a short background to the preliminary proposal and areas of interest to the Stroke Foundation for consideration by the Research Advisory Committee. Proposals should be sent to research@strokefoundation.com.au

If approved, the Stroke Foundation will work with the research group in the development of the proposal