Bulletin

Issue: November/December 2006

News

Health Sciences - making a difference

Improving the sexual health of Australians with intellectual disabilities - and the lives of postdisaster amputees in places like India...

One of the works from
the exhibition,
‘Intimate Encounters’,
which were featured at
the conference.
Photographer:
Belinda Mason-Loverling.

Worlds apart, these two studies indicate the breadth of expertise and depth of commitment of researchers in La Trobe University’s Faculty of Health Sciences.

In December, the Faculty held its sixth annual research conference, this year on the twin themes of intellectual and physical disabilities, sharing the results of its work with health and human service practitioners and the wider community.

Faculty Dean, Professor Hal Swerissen who hosted the conference, said the research demonstrated how disability impacts on families - and the support some people need for fuller participation and inclusion in society.

The keynote speaker was Arthur Rogers, Executive Director of Disability Services in the Department of Human Services. The Department is one of the Faculty’s key research partners.

Professor Swerissen said other La Trobe research dealt with physical activity programs and communication support for people with disabilities, learning disorders, issues facing parents of adults living with Down Syndrome and vocational rehabilitation following traumatic spinal cord injury.

Sex, secrets and desire “We know nothing about the sexual desires of people with intellectual disabilities because we don’t ask them,” says Dr Lynne Hillier and Dr Kelley Johnson from La Trobe University’s Australian Research Centre in Sex Health & Society.

In a paper to the conference detailing a joint study carried out with Dr Lyn Harrison from Deakin University, the two researchers presented the reflections of people with an intellectual disability about autonomy, sex, secrets and desire in their lives.

“People with an intellectual disability have historically been the most regulated of groups, but they are rarely asked to comment on this or to talk about their lives.”

The research was based on stories about sex, love and relationships told by 25 people with intellectual disabilities. “We looked at what happens when a sex life is denied to certain groups by their families, their teachers, their carers and society in general.”

The researchers found that decisions made for individuals in the name of care and protection can often generate serious public health issues for those people.

Case study Gujarat

A La Trobe University study has found that ongoing services for amputees and people with musculoskeletal injuries after a major disaster are more useful than the mobile outreach clinics often set up after such events.

And the clinical skills of staff sent into these areas are more important than technical considerations like the quality and finish of the prosthetic devices they provide to victims.

Wesley Pryor, lecturer at La Trobe University’s National Centre for Prosthetics and Orthotics, led a major study of post-earthquake amputees in Gujarat, West India.

He says the findings of the study - carried out in collaboration with Handicap International and local partners in India - reinforced the need for a more coordinated approach to prosthetics care in rapid-response situations.

The study followed one of history’s most powerful earthquakes which struck Gujarat, West India, in 2001. The epicentre was Bhuj, a town about the size of Bendigo. About 30,000 people were killed and 100,000 injured.

Mr Pryor says reconstruction after such natural disasters - or after major military conflicts - involves international aid by prosthetists and orthotists who work with local communities providing artificial limbs and other mobility aids.

“Responses to such events are often, understandably chaotic. Multiple agencies arrive. In Gujarat, there were eight different providers of prosthetic services.”

“Enthusiasm for helping is often not matched by a coordinated approach or systematic understanding of which interventions are most effective. ‘Very often, inappropriate prosthetic devices end up in a cupboard or under a bed. We needed to know how to decrease that by providing appropriate technology.”