RESEARCH
Centre of Research Excellence
Frail patients are often harmed in hospitals, and Australia’s tertiary care system is ill-equipped to cater for the increasing number of middle-aged and older adults with multiple co-morbidities and complex health problems.
The “Improving Hospital Outcomes for Frail Patients Across Different Disciplines Centre of Research Excellence” (Frailty-ADD CRE) is a five-year, multidisciplinary program that systematically addresses key barriers to frailty-informed care for hospital patients.
This program of research works to improve hospital outcomes for frail patients by helping healthcare systems understand the impact of frailty on outcomes and costs, developing clinical practice guidelines for frailty informed care across multiple disciplines, developing a core outcome set for frail patients, and upskilling the next generation of researchers and clinicians to continue the legacy of this Centre of Research Excellence.
Six programs of work
The Frailty-ADD CRE includes six programs of research.
Program 1
It is the first research project in the world to evaluate frailty in hospitals at scale — quantifying the prevalence of frailty and establishing frailty-related outcomes and frailty-related costs
Program 2
The Frailty-ADD CRE is investigating the relationship between frailty, medication utilisation, and global health outcomes
Program 3
It is also developing a core outcome set of patient-important outcomes that can be used for all frailty research in any discipline
Program 4
This new knowledge will be transferred to policy and practice by championing practice change initiatives
Program 5
Piloting implementation studies across different disciplines
Program 6
Providing frailty education and training for healthcare professionals and students
The Frailty-ADD CRE is establishing a cutting-edge capacity building scaffold to train the next generation of health and medical researchers with the potential to become leaders in their fields.
These six interrelated programs and structured capacity building have the potential to transform the care of frail patients in Australian hospitals.
Study team and funding
This study is funded through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) 2022 Cebtre for Research Excellence grant scheme (APP2015821), with a grant duration of five years.
Professor Ruth Hubbard, Masonic Chair of Geriatric Medicine at the Centre for Health Services Research at the University of Queensland, is the Chief investigator for this program of work. The CRE is led by Donna Reidlinger, CRE Coordinator, and Dr Kristiana Ludlow, CRE Program Coordinating Fellow.
This CRE brings together the world’s leading frailty researchers, and clinicians, educators, and health services researchers who are best placed to deliver on the vision to improve the outcomes for frail hospital inpatients.
List of investigators
Chief Investigators
Institution
Professor Ruth Hubbard
The University of Queensland
Prof Sarah Hilmer
University of Sydney
Prof Kenneth Rockwood
Dalhousie University
Prof Kirsten Howard
University of Sydney
Prof Allison Jaure
University of Sydney
Prof Monika Janda
The University of Queensland
Prof Christopher Etherton-Beer
University of Western Australia
Assoc Prof Danijela Gnjidic
University of Sydney
Prof Kwang Lim
University of Melbourne
Dr Natasha Reid
The University of Queensland
Associate Investigators
Institution
Prof Dan Siskind
The University of Queensland
Prof David Story
University of Melbourne
Prof Anna Nowak
University of Western Australia
Dr Adrienne Young
Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital
A/Prof Rosemary Saunders
Edith Cowan University
A/prof Nicola Warren
Metro South Hospital and Health Service
Dr Emily Gordon
The University of Queensland
Prof Heather Allore
Yale University
Prof Andrew Clegg
University of Leeds
Prof Fiona Lake
University of Western Australia
Please direct any queries to Dr Kristiana Ludlow, CRE Program Coordinating Fellow, at [email protected].
