Nausea. Vomiting. Abdominal pain. Feeling full quickly after eating. These are some of the symptoms of gastroparesis, or ‘delayed gastric emptying’ – and there is no known cure. Gastroenterologist Dr Vincent Ho, clinical project director of Western Sydney University’s GI Motility Disorders Unit together with other gastroenterology motility specialists is developing new diagnostics and treatment options that address the root cause of this mysterious condition which commonly affects young women.

“With gastroparesis, the normal stomach contractions that move food through the digestive tract are weakened or impaired,” says Dr Ho.

“If left untreated, for some, drastic measures are required, such as feeding tubes. Symptoms can linger for a lifetime.”

Dr Ho is passionate about making a real difference for the lives of people suffering from this condition. In conducting research investigating the underlying cause, he is hoping that more specific treatments may one day help improve the quality of life of people with gastroparesis.

A patient meeting with a turning point

It was back in 2011 when a consultation with a young patient opened Dr Ho’s eyes to the unusual condition of gastroparesis. Investigations indicated that there was nothing wrong with the structure of the stomach. But there was something seriously wrong with its functioning.

“I was privileged to meet a young lady named Ashley, a law clerk in her twenties, who presented to my Campbelltown Hospital gastroenterology clinic with symptoms of nausea, vomiting and fullness. Multiple tests later, Dr Ho discovered that she had a condition called gastroparesis.

“I tried multiple medications, none of which had worked for her. It was a real eye opener. I thought to myself – how am I going to get her better? A large part of me just could not accept that this condition could strike down a young person and leave them so sick without a possibility of a cure.”

Gastrointestinal motility program well underway

Ashley was instrumental in Dr Ho developing a program focusing on gastrointestinal motility disorders including gastroparesis.

“A motility disorder occurs when muscles and nerves in the digestive tract don’t work properly,” explains Dr Ho. “This causes abnormal movement (or ‘motility’) of food, fluid, or waste through the digestive system. In the case of gastroparesis where the food moves very slowly out of the stomach, this means that it’s stuck in the stomach for a prolonged period. Food which is stuck leads to those symptoms of nausea, vomiting and feeling full.”

Ashley ended up having to be tube fed.

“This was a drastic solution. Imagine the impact on someone who is otherwise healthy, having to have a feeding tube inserted.”

“This all happened to her one day when she was recovering from the flu. Gastroparesis can often start after an infection, or gastro and tends to be a chronic problem,” Dr Ho explains.

“Today — as it was back then — not a lot is known about the condition, other than that it predominantly affects young women, and they continue to experience symptoms.”

Cellular research

As principal investigator with the Gastroparesis and Functional Dyspepsia Biobank project through Western Sydney University’s School of Medicine, Dr Ho together with Professor Nicholas Talley at Newcastle University is conducting cellular-level research into why stomach motility fails, and what treatments could help.

“We know that the stomach — like the heart — has a natural ‘pacemaker’ function. Unlike the heart, where in people it can vary between 60-100 beats per minute, the stomach has contractions of three cycles per minute or so. In the digestive system, slow-wave electrical activity — like pulses — keeps the digestive system working properly. In people with gastroparesis, these specialised cells, in the gastrointestinal tract, are dysfunctional.”

Dr Ho wants to understand why or how these rare and fragile cells, called ICC cells (interstitial cells of Cajal) become dysfunctional in gastroparesis.

Dr Ho and his research team at the School of Medicine, Western Sydney University were the first to conduct genomic sequencing of these ICC cells. From the genomic sequencing came interesting insights into the genetic makeup of these cells in healthy humans.

The cells were extracted from stomach samples donated by people who had completed gastric sleeve surgery. The technique used to identify and extract the cells was quite unique and difficult to undertake, requiring a significant effort from the research team to co-ordinate.

The research identified proteins that could shed more light on how these ICC cells become dysfunctional with gastroparesis.

“We know that people with gastroparesis have fewer ICCs, and they are dysfunctional. We are yet to uncover how the patients have developed the dysfunction. Knowing why ICC cells are lost or don’t work properly will enable the development of diagnostics and treatments based on this dysfunction.”

“This will hopefully give us more insights into drug targets,” Dr Ho explains.

Discovery of dietary fibre suited to people with gastroparesis

Dietary fibre is often touted as good for gut health. For people with gastroparesis, fibre is problematic. “This is because it slows digestion and may worsen symptoms such as bloating, nausea, fullness, and stomach pain,” Dr Ho says.

“We are exploring how different types of fibre affect people with gastroparesis. A pilot study that we conducted suggested that some low-viscosity soluble fibres such as partially hydrolysed guar gum and gum arabic, instead of standard fibre like psyllium husk, may be better tolerated without aggravating symptoms.”

Ways to obtain samples from the stomach, minus surgery

Previously, endoscopy could only sample the superficial layers of the stomach. Collecting deeper layers of stomach tissue, which included muscle, required surgery.

“In the past, getting any deep kind of tissue from deep within the stomach has been challenging … we are researching ways, using new technologies, to access deeper samples from the stomach via endoscopy. This could open up the possibility of getting deep stomach tissue samples from people with gastroparesis.”

A minimally invasive way to sample the deeper layers of the stomach would be a game-changer for gastroparesis research. This would enable many more samples to be collected from both healthy individuals and people with gastroparesis. This minimally invasive approach of collecting stomach samples combined with the cellular research Dr Ho is undertaking would provide a much better understanding of how the ICC cells in healthy people can change and become dysfunctional in gastroparesis.

Gastroparesis awareness and advocacy

Dr Ho, together with the gastroparesis community, are raising awareness of the condition through advocacy via a website and Facebook group.

• The GI Motility website, created by Western Sydney University
  This informs patients and referrers about clinical evaluation and care for motility disorders; highlights pioneering research into gut physiology, therapeutic innovation, and device technologies; and engages the broader community and amplifies the voices of patients through support networks and partnerships.
  https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/gimotility/home
• A Facebook community called The Inside Story is a safe, peer-led space where patients and carers connect and share information. Dr Ho was instrumental in helping establish this Facebook community a decade ago.
• The Gastroparesis Australia website
  This website is a source of support, advocacy, and information for people living with gastroparesis.
  Western Sydney University’s GI Motility Unit provides the digital infrastructure for the organisation.

https://www.gastroparesisaustralia.com/

Topics that Dr Vincent Ho is available to present on include:

• Gut health
• Gut science
• Any gut diseases such as IBS, IBD, coeliac disease, eosinophilic oesophagitis, gastroparesis, reflux, colon cancer
• Life as a clinician scientist

About Vincent Ho

Dr Vincent Ho is a 2024 New South Wales Young Tall Poppy Science Award recipient.

Dr Vincent Ho is a gastroenterologist at Campbelltown Hospital and an Associate Professor at the School of Medicine, Western Sydney University. Vincent leads a Translational Gastroenterology Research program at the School of Medicine focusing on basic science and clinical research in the gut. He has a strong passion in education of the science of the gut to health discipline audiences as well as the general public. He is more widely known to the public as the GutDr.

https://gutdr.com/articles/

Every 19 minutes, someone in Australia will have a stroke. One-third of those stroke survivors will have aphasia, a condition affecting their ability to communicate – to speak, understand, read, write, use numbers and gestures. More than 140,000 Australians are living with aphasia – and without timely intervention, aphasia can lead to concerning psychosocial outcomes, including social isolation, depression and a poorer quality of life.

“We use language every day without even thinking of it – when we send an email, listen to a podcast, or talk to a friend,” says speech pathologist and NHMRC Research Fellow Associate Professor Sarah Wallace. Her research focuses on communication disabilities in ageing and post-stroke aphasia, emphasising qualitative, participatory research methods in partnership with people who have lived experience of communication disability.

“People with communication difficulties can find it more difficult to have a say about matters that concern them. When people living with aphasia cannot be heard, it’s difficult for them to connect with the help and support they need. This is why loss of language is so devastating.”

Difficulties often persist long after stroke

Wallace explains that when people with aphasia cannot say the words they want to say, or have difficulty understanding others, day-to-day life can be overwhelmingly difficult. For many people with aphasia, these difficulties can persist long after their stroke.

“About one-third (27%) of people who have a stroke will have aphasia, a 2025 study by PhD candidate Marissa Stone has found . Of those people with aphasia, around two-thirds will continue to have chronic communication difficulties a year later.

“Our research has found important differences in the care that people with aphasia receive in acute hospital settings. We found that patients with aphasia were less likely to be assessed for mood impairment, receive risk factor education or be involved in care plan development.”

People with aphasia were also more likely to have a more severe stroke, more in-hospital complications and in-hospital deaths. They were less independent at discharge, less often discharged home, and more likely to be discharged into residential care.

“This combination of poor outcomes and differences in care quality can result in significant unmet needs.”

Optimising the lives of people living with aphasia

Wallace leads a large research team, LexLab — the Lived Experience Lab — within the Queensland Aphasia Research Centre (QARC; https://shrs.uq.edu.au/qarc). QARC is the first centre of its kind in Australia, dedicated to optimising the lives of people living with aphasia through research, service, and partnerships.

Curiosity, sparked

It was working with people with aphasia in Canberra that sparked Wallace’s interest in aphasia.

“As a speech pathologist in Canberra, I witnessed firsthand the extent of the challenges that people with aphasia experience. Because aphasia is a communication disability, it can be difficult for those who live with it to explain the condition to others or advocate for themselves.”

“In Canberra, I worked with people with aphasia from when they first had a stroke to many, many years later when they had returned home to live in the community. One of the highlights of my time in Canberra was working with the community to host the 2006 Australian Aphasia Association Conference. The AAA is the national peak body and advocacy organisation for people living with aphasia in Australia. During the conference people with aphasia gave presentations and shared their stories and experiences. This really brought home to me just how important it is for people with aphasia to have the opportunity to connect and be heard.”

Co-designing better ways of living well with aphasia

In the years since, co-designing better ways to live well with aphasia has become central to Wallace’s work.

Wallace and her team work with people living and working with aphasia to co-produce interventions (such as technology and therapies), systems and standards that improve quality of care and outcomes for people with aphasia. Key to this is working in partnership with people who have lived experience of aphasia – as well as their families, friends, clinicians and community members.

So far, this work has included co-design of technology such as the Aphasia Research Library, the AphasiaFit app, and the CommuniKey browser extension.

Wallace has also led work to co-create systems and standards for measuring quality of aphasia care and outcomes, such as the ROMA core outcome set, and the MEASuRES minimum dataset. Supporting the development of PhD candidates is a key role for Wallace. These projects have spanned topics including returning to driving with aphasia, raising aphasia awareness, developing outcome measures, and establishing priorities for aphasia services.

“One project that we are really excited about is an international project to raise awareness of aphasia. Dr Claire Bennington co-designed an international aphasia awareness campaign during her PhD. It’s the first campaign of its kind – built by people living with aphasia, shaped by their stories, and driven by a shared vision for change. We are now working to translate our campaign design into action. The Tavistock Trust for Aphasia has offered us AU$72,958 in funding to support this, if we can match it with an additional AU$72,958. So, this week, in Stroke Week, we are launching a campaign to ‘Match the Momentum’. We have set up a JustGiving page to help raise the additional funds and we are encouraging the community to get behind this initiative: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/qarc-uq-aphasia-awareness

Accessible and meaningful information through co-designed research library

 Wallace and her team co-designed the Aphasia Research Library (https://www.aphasialibrary.org), an online template and searchable database. The Aphasia Research Library supports information access by generating user-friendly research summaries that reflect individual content and communication preferences.

“It was our goal to create an inclusive, user-friendly resource that empowers people with aphasia to access and understand research that is relevant to their lives and will inform their treatment decision making,” Wallace said.\

Wallace and her team are currently seeking funding to expand the library to suit the needs and preferences of all people living with stroke.

When it’s measured, it can be monitored and improved

Wallace leads the MEASuRES project, aimed at establishing routine measurement of important information about who people with aphasia are; the quality of care they receive in hospital, the treatments they receive, as well as the language, communication, emotional wellbeing and quality of life outcomes they experience before and after treatments.

“My interest in this area began with my PhD. I wanted to improve the efficiency and relevancy of aphasia research by developing a core outcome set (a minimum set of outcomes that should be measured in aphasia treatment studies). We worked with researchers, clinicians and people living with aphasia around the world to work out which outcomes were most important to measure. We are now looking at this in hospital environments and trying to collect consistent data and outcomes that help us understand where gaps in care exist and the factors that might improve someone’s outcomes.”

So far, the team has developed a new set of quality indicators for aphasia care and is testing a minimum dataset in partnership with five health services: Metro North Health (QLD), Monash Health (VIC), St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne (VIC), Sir Charles Gairdner Osborne Park Hospital Group (WA), and Fiona Stanely Fremantle Hospitals (WA). Data collection is well underway, with nearly 70 participants already contributing valuable information.

AphasiaFIT app for managing recovery at home

Wallace, together with her co-investigators at Queensland Aphasia Research Centre, including Mr. Gopal Sinh who has aphasia, have designed a smartphone app to support people living with aphasia in managing their own recovery at home.

Co-designed with people with aphasia, families and clinicians, the app connects users in a private social network, supporting ongoing, individualised care.

Much like a ‘fitness tracker for communication’, it supports goal setting, links goals, therapy and outcomes, and offers visual graphics of progress, and daily wellbeing check-ins via prompts. The app is in prototype form and will be further developed as part of a new project.

Wallace says a highlight of this project was travelling to Perth with Gopal to co-present the research outcomes at the National Australian Aphasia Association Conference and Aphasiology Symposium of Australasia.

Cracking the myths of osteoarthritis treatment: 
Why exercise, not surgery, should be the first step 

Some 2.2 million Australians, or 1 in 4 people over 55 live with knee or hip osteoarthritis. Within 15 years, this figure will reach 3.1 million. Osteoarthritis is the 14th highest cause of disability and rising, costing $4.3 billion annually in healthcare expenses alone, with joint replacement surgery responsible for over 80% of this figure.

Surgery is ‘no silver bullet’ 

As much as 83% of joint replacement surgeries for osteoarthritis could be delayed, or avoided, if patients choose to swap surgery with non-surgical care – education, exercise and weight management.  

“Almost half still report pain years after surgery,” says Dr Felicity Braithwaite, Research Fellow from the University of South Australia.

“Plus, four in five feel they weren’t properly informed about other treatment options before surgery.”

Myths about osteoarthritis mean more are going under the knife

Prevailing societal myths about the best ways to manage osteoarthritis are partly responsible for why many Australians choose to go under the knife, says Dr Braithwaite. 

“These misconceptions are widespread among consumers, clinicians, family and friends, and in the media.”

“People living with OA told us about a huge number of misconceptions around osteoarthritis that are still rampant. People perceive, for example, that the joint is ‘bone on bone’, and that surgery is the only solution for OA.” 

“Other examples of myths they expressed were “exercise causes more wear and tear”, and “when a joint is bone on bone, it needs surgery”.”

Uptake of core management strategies is poor 

Despite being best practice for osteoarthritis, education, exercise and weight loss are still poorly adopted.

“Many people — over half — never try exercise therapy. And only one in three attempt weight loss before having surgery. Surgery rates are projected to rise 276% by 2030 compared with 2013.”

Dr Braithwaite sats these patterns reflect a deep gap between research and real-world practice — a translation problem. 

“We need to stop thinking of surgery as the only option for OA,” says Braithwaite. “The real treatment gap isn’t access to surgery. Rather, it’s a lack of awareness or belief in the proven strategies. These beliefs are stemming from almost everywhere, including healthcare providers, and via public information such as websites and the media. Further, general practitioners are referring to surgeons three times more often than non-surgical care.”

Pain education, science and storytelling

Dr Braithwaite is co-designing fun, educational myth busting videos to help educate the public about osteoarthritis. This series of myth busting messages and campaigns are being co-designed with consumers, clinicians, pain organisations, and marketing experts.

“It is important to teach people that there are alternatives to surgery — and the best way to do this is through using the consumer voice so that the messages are believable, meaningful, and not stigmatising.” 

Codesigning consumer campaigns to tackle myths head on 

As part of a three-year project generously funded by The Hospital Research Foundation-Arthritis, a consumer advisory panel of 10 people with hip, knee, foot and ankle OA was formed. 

“We partnered with these consumers as ‘co-researchers’ to decide how best to use the grant funding. We asked them what they saw as the biggest barriers to best practice management of osteoarthritis, and their suggested solutions. The co-researchers came up with the idea that a society-wide media campaign is needed to tackle misconceptions about OA and best-practice management.” 

Dubbed ‘mainstreaming osteoarthritis’, the campaign is aimed at reducing the negative impacts of common unhelpful misconceptions. The advisory panel identified seven key myths to tackle, co-designing educational videos for each myth for future campaigns.  

Results are showing promise 

“So far, we have co-designed a series of brief videos including informational animations as well as testimonials from real people with OA telling their success stories with best-practice management.” 

Early results from pilot testing indicate these videos are already showing promise: a single viewing of one of the educational videos significantly improved osteoarthritis beliefs in consumers, clinicians and the wider public. It also improved the intention to exercise in people with OA, with 24% saying they were less likely to see a surgeon in the next year1.  

Coming soon: a nationwide media campaign

A future nationwide media campaign is the next goal, according to Dr Braithwaite.

“We are developing educational content that we have co-designed with consumers, using contemporary market research techniques to optimise campaign messages for maximum impact across a broad cross-section of society.”

Explore osteoarthritis myths in the paper titled “Osteoarthritis consumers as co-researchers: identifying consumer insights to improve osteoarthritis management by co-designing translational research solutions”, co-authored with six members of the consumer advisory panel here:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36924920/  

Dr Felicity Braithwaite is a 2024 SA Young Tall Poppy recipient 

Shooting across the sky at 15km per second, its bright green and blue flashes were visible for a phenomenal nine seconds. The Mother’s Day Meteorite’s entry into the earth’s atmosphere was observed from inner city Perth, and all the way out past Kalgoorlie, to Leonora, two hours north of Kalgoorlie, more than 600km to the north-east of Western Australia. 

Its journey was captured by planetary scientist Eleanor Sansom and her team at the Australian Desert Fireball Network. 

Through her research at Curtin University and role as director of the Network, Eleanor investigates the origins of space rocks on earth, how they enter earth’s atmosphere, and tracks where meteorites may land.

Light, camera, action

The Desert Fireball Network (DFN) is built of autonomous, high-resolution observatories using everyday Nikon DSLR cameras and all-sky fish-eye lenses. They are dotted across the West Australian wheatbelt and across the Nullarbor, covering nearly 2.5 million square kilometres of skies, to observe the entry of space rocks like the Mother’s Day Meteorite through the atmosphere as fireballs.  

“The DFN can see everything from pea-size gravel to multi-metre asteroids,” says Eleanor.

“It can work out where they come from in the solar system, and if it survives to the surface, predict a landing spot. This gives these meteorites a spatial context that is usually missing and is essential for unlocking the full potential of meteorite samples.”

Unlocking origins

“Of the 70,000 meteorites in collections around the world, the origins of about 60 are known.
The DFN has helped pick up 25% of those. This not only helps us build a geological map of the solar system, but it also allows the team to link meteorites to potentially hazardous regions of space, and to other asteroids.”

Lost and found

 When it came to tracking down the case of the Mother’s Day Meteorite, the team got super excited. 

“It’s always challenging to find the meteorite on the ground afterwards, especially when rocks come in at a shallow angle and the fall area gets really long,” says Eleanor. “We got very lucky on this occasion as the main search area was over salt lakes.” 

“They often fall into the ocean too places that we just cannot reach.”

“With such finds, we can piece together how our planetary system began and how dust and gas formed a planet capable of supporting life.” 

“Our experience with the Mother’s Day Meteorite was exceptional, because we mapped its trajectory with precision to figure out its orbit.”

Help from our friends

Due to the angle at which the meteorite entered the atmosphere, its ‘fall area’ was very large, at fifty square kilometres.

“Being a small team and given the expanse that needed to be covered … we released the full strewn field to the public hoping others would be interested in joining the search.” 

“We’ve found a meteorite before on a salt lake, and it made a big splash visible from the air. We hoped this might have happened again, so we also decided to take out a spotter plane. We didn’t get out hopes up but were really excited when we spotted two convincing spots on the lake.” 

Cop and amateur meteorologist finds the first piece

Eleanor said it was exciting that a member of the public — a policeman and amateur meteorologist — found across the first fragment.

“From the plane we spotted a member of the public on the ground, who had travelled from 200km away to reach Lake Hope.”

“That piece of meteorite is going to be put on display at the WA Museum by the end of July for everyone to see. It will be especially exciting for those that saw the fireball themselves!”

Three main meteorite fragments have now been collected and will be sent around the world to be studied in labs. 

“What we know so far is that the Mother’s Day Meteorite was the same type (LL ordinary chondrite) as the Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013. That meteor streaked through the skies as a fireball that caused a destructive supersonic shockwave strong enough to smash windows and damage buildings.” 

“The orbit is also similar, and it will be interesting to start looking into the planetary defence aspect – how risky are asteroids and space rocks from that area of our solar system.” 

Q & A 

Was the Mother’s Day Meteorite a rare occurrence? How often are meteorites spotted in Australia?

We see about 300 fireballs per night over Australia with the network. Of those, about 10 per year can drop 50g+ sized meteorites. We search for those that are larger and easier to get to, and we pick up about one per We now have the added capability of conducting drone surveys to spot meteorite candidates on the ground, and this number is going to increase in the coming years!

 Was the Mother’s Day Meteorite spotted by humans first, or cameras?

Cameras capture events at night and spend the day processing/running detection software, but also as it was a Sunday, we wouldn’t have seen the detection until the Monday morning. So, we were alerted to the excitement of this one by the media requests.

 What is the Desert Fireball Network’s role in Australia’s planetary defence efforts?

The Desert Fire Network is part of a growing national network of Planetary Defence teams across the country as part of the Southern Hemisphere Asteroid Research Consortium to detect and monitor asteroids in space and learn about their impact risks. 

On a visit to the Rohingya refugee settlement in Bangladesh, a scene that stayed with Simon Rosenbaum, Professor of Psychiatry and Mental Health at UNSW, was seeing children playing soccer. The match was led by a local coach who knew every name and each story. 

“Sometimes you’d see hundreds of people gathered for a single game,” Simon recalls.  “For those ninety minutes, the pitch wasn’t just a place to play; it was a space for connection. For belonging. It was where people got a break from the relentless challenges they were facing.” 

That moment built on a foundation already laid through years of research. As part of Simon’s PhD, he led the first study investigating the role of exercise in supporting people living with severe PTSD. His work played a key role in advancing the understanding of physical activity as a credible, research-supported intervention in the treatment of trauma and mental health conditions.

The visit to Cox’s Bazar reframed the question.

“It wasn’t just about proving that exercise works,” he explains. “It pushed me to ask: ‘how do we deliver these interventions in ways that are culturally meaningful, trauma-informed, and accessible to the people we hope will benefit?’”

The importance of co-design

Back in Australia, that insight helped shape a mission that now defines much of Simon’s work — co-designing physical activity services with communities. Including people from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds, ensuring programs are embedded in trusted settings and built around safety, dignity and inclusion.

Exercise and nutrition as therapeutic tools

Simon now co-leads the NExuS research group at UNSW, short for Nutrition, Exercise and Social Equity, a cross-disciplinary team of exercise physiologists, dietitians and food security experts, physiotherapists, psychologists and public health experts. The team investigates how exercise and nutrition can be used as therapeutic tools for people facing systemic disadvantage. 

Physical activity programs without barriers

One example is Addi Moves, a free, community-based physical activity service in Marrickville’s Addison Road Community Centre. The program, co-designed with people from refugee backgrounds, focuses on removing barriers that often prevent participation: cost, language, safety, and stigma.

“It is a dedicated space run by accredited exercise physiologists where we provide access to free, supportive, trauma-informed and culturally responsive physical activity programs including people with an asylum seeker or refugee background, particularly women, in a safe, welcoming space where they can ‘move their mood’. By this I’m referring to experiencing the mental and physical benefits of exercise.”

“It’s a space giving people access to these programs who typically wouldn’t, because we know that movement and activity can have such an impact on how we feel.” 

Simon describes the space as a ‘not gym’ – minus the mirrors, loud music and sign-up fees.

“It’s where movement is a pathway to healing, in a space designed by the people it serves.” 

The program was co-designed with asylum seekers and refugees to be free, inclusive, and flexible. It offers group exercise sessions, informal play, and links to other community supports like Thread Together, a source of clothing for single parents, and Joy of Giving, a hub for pre-loved toys.  

At its heart, Addi Moves embodies a simple idea: when physical activity is made safe, welcoming and accessible, it can be an agent of change – for improved mental wellbeing, community connection and a soft, destigmatising entry point into other health and social services. 

Moving mood 

After a single Addi Moves session, the data shows participants are reporting improved mood. Of the more than 2,000 sessions run since 2022, the pattern still holds true.

“These are people facing intersectional disadvantage — mental illness, trauma histories, and yet with supported movement, we are seeing that something is shifting.” 

“We know from the data that people feel better. And sometimes, that moment is the ‘opening up’ they need to engage with other supports,” Simon says. 

The concept embodied in Addi Moves is being extended through initiatives like SportCoach+, which trains coaches to deliver community-based, trauma-informed movement programs in contexts affected by war and displacement. 

From pitch to policy 

What began with a local coach on a dusty pitch in Cox’s Bazar has grown into an international research agenda, a community-based service, and a new way of thinking about how movement, mental health, and care intersect.
 

And Simon’s goal? To redefine how physical activity and nutrition are embedded within systems of care, especially for communities who have historically been underserved due to intersecting experiences of trauma, displacement, and systemic exclusion.
 

About Simon Rosenbaum 

Simon Rosenbaum is a Professor in the Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health at UNSW Sydney and the co-lead of the NExuS research group (Nutrition, Exercise, and Social Equity). His research focuses on the intersection of physical activity and mental health, particularly for populations exposed to trauma and social disadvantage. 

No parent wants to face the moment when a surgeon needs to cut burned tissue from their child’s body. But for many families, it’s a painful reality, particularly as children under five represent the highest hospitalisation rate for burns in Australia. 

For clinicians, one of the biggest challenges is knowing how a child’s burn is likely to behave. The likelihood of infection. The extent of scarring, or the number of hospital visits needed for skin grafts and revision surgery. Then there’s other unknowns, such as the level of risk of long-term complications like chronic inflammation. 

Dr Xanthe Venn, Senior Research Fellow at Future Industries Institute at the University of South Australia is probing such questions. Through her research with clinicians in Burns Units in both Western Australia and South Australia, Dr Venn is exploring ways to improve healing outcomes for burn patients. This work relates to stopping scar tissue forming and preventing the need for ongoing scar revisionary surgery, by understanding the balance between healthy immune response and harmful inflammation. 

“We know around 220,000 Australians suffer a burn each year, and about 10% require hospitalisation,” she says. “Children under five have the highest rates of hospitalisation from burns.”

In the first days after a burn, the body launches its inflammatory response. “A little inflammation is a good thing. It’s a sign that the immune system doing its job,” Dr Venn explains. “But too much inflammation can lead to complications. It can contribute to damage to other organs and is linked to fibrosis, or excessive scarring.” 

“If dead tissue remains on top of healthy tissue, it can trigger further damage – ‘die off’ and infection. So, it is important clinicians know which burns are so bad that a patient needs to go to surgery.” 

Innovative ideas taking ‘Fliight’

Dr Venn is investigating the role of a protein called Flightless I (Flii), which affects how skin cells respond to damage and how scars form. Her work has shown that wounds tend to heal more effectively and with less scarring when Flii levels are lower. 

“We think Flii is part of the reason some wounds don’t heal well. It interacts with key proteins in the body that regulate tissue repair and inflammation,” she says. 

By identifying how Flii behaves in burn wounds, Dr Venn hopes to develop therapies that help clinicians predict healing outcomes and tailor treatments. These therapies could one day reduce the need for repeat surgeries, shortening hospital stays, and improving quality of life for burn patients.

This work was part of her broader research into skin biology, initiated at the Women’s and Children’s Health Research Institute before the lab’s relocation to the University of South Australia in 2013. Dr. Venn was awarded her PhD from the University of South Australia in 2016 for her investigation into the role of Flightless I in tissue regeneration.  

Getting the balance right

Dr Venn is also looking more broadly at how to balance the body’s inflammatory response – not suppress it completely but modulate it – so wounds get the right ‘burst’ of immune activity to allow the wound to heal best. This could have major benefits, not just for burns, but also for people with chronic wounds caused by conditions like diabetes, where inflammation lingers for too long, and wounds fail to heal. 

Ultimately, Dr Venn’s goal is to help support clinicians in their decisions about how best to treat each patient and to help prevent patients from needing to return to hospital.