Skip to main content

Vulnerable Populations pillar

Our vision is to work with various governmental, health, university, and international partners to investigate ways to improve care delivery, especially for vulnerable population groups who present to the emergency department.

Since 2014, we have received grants from various funding sources including:

  • the National Health and Medical Research Council
  • Department of Social Services
  • the Emergency Medicine Foundation
  • Gold Coast Hospital Foundation
  • Griffith University
  • Healthcare Improvement Unit (Clinical Excellence Queensland).

Several Griffith University students have also engaged in research within our pillar.

Our aims

Our pillar aims to:

  • undertake emergency care research important to clinicians, health service managers and policy makers
  • build research capacity by providing opportunities for clinicians, students and academics to be involved in emergency care research
  • promote the excellence, relevance and impact of our research
  • sustain and strengthen our research network through local, state, national and international collaborations.

Our team

Name Job title/s
Prof Julia Crilly Pillar Lead
Dr Jamie Ranse Associate Professor
Ms Amy Sweeny Research Development Manager
Ms Rachael Dunning Nurse Unit Manager
Professor Gerben Keijzers Staff Specialist, Pillar Lead
Ms Emma Hall Research Nurse
Dr Nemat Alsaba ED Staff Specialist
Dr Caitlin Brandenburg Research Fellow
Dr Jayne Hewitt Visiting Research Fellow
Dr Rachel Muir Visiting Research Fellow
Dr Jayne Hewitt Visiting Research Fellow
Dr Thomas Torpie Researcher
Dr Dinesh Palipana Researcher
Dr Ya-Ling (Rebecca) Huang Visiting Research Fellow
Dr Richy Pellatt Research Fellow
Ms Brittany Skelsey Department Support Officer
   

 

Our research themes

The current research themes within our pillar include to:

  • understand, inform and evaluate service improvements for vulnerable populations such as paediatrics, older people, people with mental health problems, and people arriving to the Emergency Department by police
  • evaluate out-of-hospital models of care that aim to improve emergency service delivery for vulnerable populations
  • describe the impact on emergency department presentations from new, or changes made to, government policy.

Our partners

We have undertaken research with various governmental, health, university and international collaborators, such as:

We have also collaborated with various private and public health services within Queensland.


Current projects

Alcohol misuse is a major health issue and can cause many diseases and injury conditions. The…

Find out more >>

The number of presentations to public emergency departments diagnosed with a mental illness in…

Find out more >>

In 2018, the Gold Coast hosted one of the largest sporting mass gathering events in the country…

Find out more >>


Publications

Developing public health initiatives through understanding motivations of the audience at mass gathering events

Hutton, A., Ranse, J., & Munn, M. B. (2018). Prehospital and disaster medicine, 33(2), 191-196.


Emergency department models of care in Queensland: a multisite cross-sectional study

Bell, A., Toloo, G. S., Crilly, J., Burke, J., Williams, G., McCann, B., & FitzGerald, G. (2018). Australian Health Review.


Impact of patients presenting with alcohol and/or drug intoxication on in-event health care services at mass-gathering events: An integrative literature review

Bulloack M, Ranse J, Hutton A. (2018). Prehospital and Disaster Medicine.



Last updated 16 Sep 2024