Celebrating Success

Flinders’ efforts to encourage the next generation of female STEM students continues to reap encouraging results, medicinal cannabis research expands, and a landmark mental health study reveals big gaps in our support systems. 

Girls respond to STEM Enrichment support

Harvest Christian College students and teachers at Flinders for the recent STEM conference.

Through STEM Enrichment programs, Flinders University is developing STEM capabilities among high school Year 9 girls and their science teachers. Since its establishment in October 2018, these STEM Enrichment programs have reached 531 Year 9 girls (far exceeding its target of 120 students) and 85 schoolteachers. While the Enrichment Academy program was not run in 2020 due to COVID-19 disruptions and mandated shutdown of non-essential university activities, it restarted in February 2021 with a three-day Enrichment Conference that was fully booked out with 80 students, and included federally-funded regional scholarships enabling 18 students from Kadina’s Harvest Christian College and 10 students from Clare to attend. As well 50 students from five schools had to be placed on a waiting list. “All aspects of the Enrichment Academy program were well received by both students and their teachers, and survey results from 2019 indicate that the Enrichment Conference was successful in developing student interest towards STEM careers,” says Associate Professor Maria Parappilly, Director and Chief Investigator of the STEM Enrichment Academy. “To see the long-term effects of this program, we contacted the schools of students who attended the STEM Enrichment Conference in 2019 and inquired about their subject choices two years on from their enrichment experience.” Responses received so far are promising: from 50 students at five schools, 41 are now studying STEM subjects at Year 11 (five other students moved schools).

New licence to develop medicinal cannabis products

Dr Peter Duggan, Bioorganic Chemistry Team Leader at CSIRO Manufacturing and Adjunct Professor with Flinders University’s College of Science and Engineering, is part of a team that will develop new medicinal cannabis products to help people with a variety of conditions including multiple sclerosis and chronic pain. Under a new licence, CSIRO will support the burgeoning local industry and partner with local manufacturers to drive the development of new cannabis therapeutics, in a move that will create new jobs in Australia. Adjunct Professor Duggan says the licence placed CSIRO at the forefront of research into the development of new cannabis medicines, which has a projected global market of $US44 billion by 2024. “Around the world, researchers are exploring the potential for medicinal cannabis to help with conditions such as epilepsy and the nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy treatment, multiple sclerosis and chronic pain,” he says. “We had been able to do early-stage work with cannabis, but the new licence will enable us to develop cannabis-derived cannabinoid medicines using innovative extraction, refinement and formulation techniques.” CSIRO is currently the only independent research institute in Australia able to develop drug manufacturing protocols in the medicinal cannabis space.

Mental health study highlights how many miss out

Flinders Professor Sharon Lawn has supported a national Lived Experience Australia survey of more than 530 consumers and carers across Australia asking why they didn’t engage (or why they disengaged) from the mental health system. The voices and statistics of 535 people who responded have been faithfully recorded in the landmark report which showed:

  • More than 50% of respondents identified that being unable to access the mental health services they needed contributed to the consumer declining into crisis, some having suicidal thoughts, attempting suicide or suicided.
  • 48% of consumers in the study were discharged from emergency departments with no follow up or referrals
  • 41% of consumers and 47% of carers could not access mental health services when they were needed.
  • General Practitioners are the primary source of mental health support for consumers and carers, despite their generalist nature
  • Difficulties in navigating the mental health system, or meeting eligibility requirements, is a major reason consumers do not receive the care they need
  • Lack of communication and collaboration between health professionals results in people having to re-tell and re-live their trauma, and a lack of consistency in their mental health support.
  • Strategies suggested by both consumer and carer respondents to support engagement or re-engagement with mental health services included better quality providers, staff training, availability of peer workers with lived experience, affordability, persistent follow up, consistency, continuity and coordinated support.

“We wanted to learn why people slip through the gaps or do not receive the mental health care they need,” the report said.

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