Professor Erica Wood awarded for excellence
Congratulations go to Professor Erica Wood, Head of the Transfusion Research Unit at the School of Public Health and Epidemiology, who has been awarded the 2019 Fiona Stanley Synergy Grant Award. This new award is given to the top-ranked Synergy grant application to the National Health and Medical Research Council.
Fiona Stanley AC FAA, Professor Erica Wood, and NHMRC CEO Professor Anne Kelso at the Awards Ceremony.
Erica collected her award at the NHMRC 2019 Annual Excellence Awards Ceremony in Canberra on the 11th March 2020.
The successful proposal from Erica and her team of collaborators aims to improve stewardship of precious national blood supplies and achieve better outcomes for patients. The research spans the management of major haemorrhage from trauma, surgery and obstetric emergencies; transfusions in intensive care; and transfusion support for people with blood cancers – including use of immunoglobulins made from donated plasma.
These three areas account for a large proportion of transfusion episodes in Australia. Erica says, “Despite this, we don’t know how much blood is used in these settings and many questions remain about the best approaches to transfusion support for these vulnerable patients.
“Because blood transfusions can save lives, but also carry risks, it’s essential to ensure that blood is being used in an evidence-based way – and currently the evidence for much of our practice is very weak.
“We spend more than a billion dollars annually in Australia on blood supplies, but that number only includes the cost of the products, not the costs of all the hospital activities every day around the country to safely complete a blood transfusion.”
Erica and colleagues will collect and analyse data on current transfusion practices, as well as studying new approaches and novel products to improve the shelf-life and function of red blood cells and platelets.
The award is named after Fiona Stanley AC FAA, an Australian epidemiologist noted for her public health research to improve outcomes for mothers and babies.