Prestigious fellowship for NCHA researcher improving eye care for people living with dementia
Dr Marianne Coleman awarded Dementia Australia Mid-Career Research Fellowship.
Everybody has a right to sight but currently there is no dementia eye care pathway in Australia and 1 in 3 people with dementia experience significant yet preventable vision impairment. That’s about to change.
Congratulations to National Centre for Healthy Ageing (NCHA) researcher, Dr Marianne Coleman, who has been awarded the $400,000 Dementia Australia Henry Brodaty Mid-Career Research Fellowship which will support her in furthering research into improving vision care for people living with dementia in residential aged care.
An orthoptist and clinical researcher, Dr Coleman is leading the ‘Designing a dementia-friendly eyecare pathway to help people with dementia "see well, to live well" in residential aged care’ project addressing systemic barriers to integrating eyecare into dementia support.
“We know that people living in residential aged care are more likely to be living with untreated vision loss … [which is also] a risk factor for dementia, as well as increasing the risk of falls or developing delirium,” Dr Coleman said.
“Up to one-third of aged care residents living with dementia experience significant, yet preventable, vision impairments and our study focuses on co-designing an eyecare pathway tailored to their needs.
“If you have visual impairment alongside dementia, it can have quite an impact. It can effectively compound the difficulties. Unfortunately, some people living with dementia are missing out on eye care, things like regular eye tests, receiving sight saving injections for eye diseases, having cataract surgery, or just replacing their glasses when they are broken or lost.
“There's a strong role for optometry services in residential aged care to prevent sight loss and to pick up eye conditions early that can threaten sight and organise prompt treatment.”
More than 430,000 Australians are living with dementia (1) and more than 50 percent of people living in permanent residential aged care have dementia. (2) Yet, there is currently no established dementia eye care pathway.
“By working with experts in eye care and aged care, as well as with people with living experience of dementia, we will develop an eye care pathway and implementation plan to help residential aged care facilities deliver high quality eye care for everyone,” Dr Coleman said. “Our findings will also include educational resources and training for aged care staff to ensure long-term adoption and success of the pathway.”
The project also received the Dementia Advocates Award decided by a panel of people with lived experience of dementia who considered this research to have the highest potential to deliver impact and meaningful outcomes for people living with dementia and their families.
Find out more about the project
How the NCHA is helping
The National Centre for Healthy Ageing is supporting Dr Coleman’s work through mentorship, collaboration with the National Aged Care Research Network (NACReN) and through our Voice consumer engagement platform.
“NCHA is a really supportive environment for emerging researchers and leads a number of really key projects in this space of dementia care, a really notable one is the update of the [national] dementia clinical practice guidelines,” Dr Coleman said.
“NACReN, which is based within the Centre, will be a really important way for me to engage with the aged care sector, with other aged care providers who are not directly involved in this research, and to organise the public consultations about the dementia eye care pathway, to ensure that many people in the residential aged care sector and the home care sector have that opportunity to contribute. [It will also allow me to] engage with key stakeholders in this space, to ensure that the pathway that we produce is going to be useful and adaptable to these different settings.
Dr Coleman is also accessing NCHA’s capability in consumer engagement, underpinned by its digital platforms.
“We have a project advisory group for this work, but the Voice community platform enables me to reach out to the wider community within the Mornington Peninsula region, where the National Centre for Healthy Ageing is based, to help shape the research as well,” she said.
Fellowship a career boost
“Receiving the fellowship is an incredible opportunity for my development and a chance to gain experience in doing research in a residential aged care setting. Having a mentored and fully supported opportunity [through NCHA] to engage in a new area of dementia research is really important to me for my future career,” Dr Coleman said.
“I hope to be able to stay with the National Centre for Healthy Ageing long term and therefore, the chance to lead a project in this supportive research environment, and to benefit from the expertise of many other experienced aged care and dementia care researchers around me, is a really important development opportunity for me as well.”
More information about the study is available at http://www.dementiaeyecare.org.
References
- Dementia Australia, https://www.dementia.org.au/about-dementia/dementia-facts-and-figures
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Dementia in Australia updated 2024, AIHW, Australian Government, accessed by NCHA Feb 2025. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/dementia/dementia-in-aus/contents/summary.
Learn more about the National Centre for Healthy Ageing (NCHA) here: ncha.org.au