NHMRC, working with Alzheimer’s Australia, HammondCare, Helping Hand and Brightwater Care Group, is pleased to announce that the first NHMRC Partnership Centre for Better Health will be established on the theme of ‘Dealing with Cognitive and Related Functional Decline in Older People’.
The Centre will be jointly governed and funded with $3.4 million from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Alzheimer’s Australia, Brightwater Care Group, HammondCare Group and Helping Hand Aged Care. In addition, in recognition of the government’s provision of $35.025 million to NHMRC in the area of dementia research for the period 2011/12 – 2014/15 an additional commitment of $1.6 million per year is made to the Partnership Centre. Thus the Centre will receive a maximum of $5 million per year for five years, with $4.87 million in direct financial aid and the remainder as in-kind resources.
The funding partners are pleased to announce that an investigator team has been selected for this centre. The Chief Investigator of the successful team is Associate Professor Susan Kurrle, Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital, NSW.
Scope and General Description of the Theme: ‘Dealing with Cognitive and Related Functional Decline in Older People’
Forty years from now in 2050 the scale of cognitive decline and its functional sequelae will dwarf almost all other social issues facing Australia. Instead of today’s 400,000 over the age of 85 there will be 1.8 million. There will be 3.5 million Australians – nearly ten percent of the population – in need of aged services, with dementia and other forms of cognitive decline representing the lion’s share of that need. Spending on aged care will consume nearly 2% of GDP but instead of the current five workers per person over 65 generating wealth there will only be 2.7.1
While physical ailments among the elderly tend to receive the lion’s share of attention it is the burden created by cognitive decline that is the hidden time-bomb. While some of this burden falls upon formal systems of caring and state forms of support, most lands on the shoulders of spouses, peers, volunteers, charities and the like. In the most optimistic outcome we will uncover a cure and/or effective preventive strategies for the various dementias that afflict the elderly (and, tragically, some of the young). However, even with this optimistic outcome there will be many who still suffer from the inevitable decline of cognitive capacity and related functional abilities that comes with age. The focus of this Partnership Centre is, therefore, on how to better apply our existing knowledge and how to create new knowledge that will directly improve our support to those elderly suffering from cognitive decline, their carers (formal and informal) and the various agencies delivering services for them.
The focus of the Centre will not be on evaluating specific health care interventions to cure or even to prevent cognitive decline. We assume there are others working in these important areas. Rather, the health care focus will be on supportive care in the home, the community and the long-term care institutions.
With this scope of work before it the Partnership Centre will clearly involve a broad array of disciplines stretching from the medical sciences, through the health-related professions and well into the evaluative and social sciences. Similarly a broad spectrum of the caring sectors will have to be involved, from the institutional, through the community, the volunteer or charity. The Partnership Centre will be a broad array of researchers and research users collaborating with a single end in mind – improving the support, caring and dignity provided to those elderly with cognitive and related functional decline.
1 Data from: Productivity Commission 2011, Caring for Older Australians, Report No. 53, Final Inquiry Report, Canberra