2022 PREMISE Seed Funding and Career Development Grants Awarded
The Matilda Centre is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2022 Prevention and Early Intervention in Mental Illness and Substance Use (PREMISE) Seed Funding and Career Development Grants.
PREMISE is a NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence led by the Matilda Centre, aiming to provide a world first synergy of the leading prevention and early intervention research and translation programs in mental health and addiction across five Australian universities:
- University of Sydney
- University of New South Wales
- University of Melbourne
- University of Newcastle, and
- Monash University.
These unique grants will provide support for valuable career development activities for early to mid-career researchers and research students to enhance their research capacity, build their national and international research networks and disseminate their research.
All applicants are commended for their outstanding and innovative proposals.
2022 recipients
This year, three early-career Seed Funding Grants were awarded, and five Travel and Career Development Grants were awarded to three early-career researchers and two higher degree research students. Recipients were from the Matilda Centre and Black Dog Institute.
Early to Mid-Career Seed Funding Recipients
The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use
Lauren will build on the successful model of OurFutures to co-design an innovative new module targeting e-cigarette use among adolescents. This will be the first program of its kind in Australia and internationally.
The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use
Jen will use the funds to visit Professor Lisa Marsch at Dartmouth University to learn how to optimise mental health and substance use interventions with innovative new therapeutic technologies to enhance the effectiveness, efficiency and uptake of harm minimisation programs for young people.
The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use
Louise will update and adapt the novel Mind your Mate app prevention program into four web-based lessons, mapped onto the Year 9 curriculum to improve engagement and uptake among youth. Mind your Mate is an innovative online intervention to help young people support their peers around mental health and substance use.
Travel & Career Development Grant Recipients
The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use
Lucy will spend time at the Stress & Development Lab, Kings College London, to develop new knowledge and skills and strengthen collaborations to inform her post-doctoral work. She will work on a publication with members of the lab and a Fellowship application to develop an online, school-based transdiagnostic prevention and early intervention program addressing trauma as a risk factor for mental ill-health.
The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use
Marlee aims to fund a Research Assistant to support her to continue the activities of the Built Environment and Mental Health Research Network that she leads whilst she is on parental leave. The collaborative Network brings together multidisciplinary researchers, policy-makers and practitioners to share expertise on the understudied relationship between mental health and built environment and develop translation frameworks to support cross-sectoral research implementation.
The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use
Lyra will be adapting Health4Life and OurFutures programs to the Colombian context. This funding will allow her to travel to Bogota to establish important connections. The funding will support Lyra’s PhD research which aims to understand how to optimally adapt and implement eHealth preventive interventions to different populations and contexts, including disadvantaged youth and adolescents from other countries.
The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use
Louise will travel to Pittsburgh to attend the ISRII conference in 2022, and New York to visit Professor Kerry Keyes and Dr Jennifer Debenham at Columbia University, New York. This funding will allow Louise her first opportunity to present findings from an RCT to test the effectiveness of an online intervention to help young people support their peers around mental health and substance use (Mind your Mate).
Black Dog Institute
Lauren aims to conduct an original study that explores children’s (ages 10 – 14) understanding of suicide and the risk processes that underpin the onset of suicidal thoughts and behaviours in this developmental stage. Lauren will use the funding to support enhancements to the research and to support dissemination, publications, and presentation at the International Association for Suicide Prevention World Congress conference in Slovenia.