We are excited to welcome Dr Maria Alejandra Pinero de Plaza (PhD) to our team! Alejandra has accepted to be our Knowledge Translation and Research Advisor to the Board.
Alejandra is a scientist committed to facilitating healthy living and better public health services through knowledge translation and health research. She is a Research Fellow at Flinders University and the National Health and Medical Research Council, Centre of Research Excellence in Frailty and Healthy Ageing. Her studies are focusing on the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions regarding behaviour change, high-tech solutions, and partnering with end-users to ensure better access, care, equity, safety, and quality services to improve health and wellbeing outcomes.
Knowledge Translation (KT) enables people to generate, refine and apply knowledge to where it needs to go to have the most impact on individuals, care and society.
Her work with Frail, Homebound and Bedridden people (FHBP) in Australia, requires generating and transferring knowledge to induce positive changes to the experiences of the FHBP. This means using the scientific method to understand and facilitate the process and the factors that define whether and how research-based knowledge finds its way into awareness and behavioural change to affect healthcare, policy, and practice.
At Flinders University’s Meet the Minds, Alejandra has presented her research in 30 minutes lecture. The research identified that about 66% of the FHBP population live with ME-ICC, ME/CFS-CCC or CFS-Fukuda. *1
An estimated 25% of people with ME, ME/CFS or CFS are housebound and bedridden. It will be essential to include the care model for FHBP in our ME Clinic.
Alejandra’s knowledge and expertise would be critical in the strategy in establishing the ME Clinic where the quality research findings be implemented into the patients care.
Her passion for our project is so valuable that we are excited about the possibilities she will bring to our missions.
*1 ME Group Australia believes that the majority of ME/CFS and CFS diagnoses in Australia would be upgraded to ME.