Frances Kay-Lambkin, recently appointed Director of HMRI, is passionate about people and their mental wellbeing. Her research project, completed with funding through the Mark Hughes Foundation's Innovation Grant, is making a real difference to brain cancer patients and their families right now!
A message from Frances
I’m Frances Kay-Lambkin, and I am a psychologist, researcher, and Professor at the University of Newcastle. I have very recently been appointed as the new Director of Hunter Medical Research Institute. In this new role, I have the privilege of supporting our fantastic researchers and clinicians across the University, the Hunter New England Local Health District, and our Hunter community to mobilise their collective intelligence and expertise to solve the greatest healthcare problems of our time. One of those is brain cancer, and it’s in that context that I’ve really valued and appreciated the work of the Mark Hughes Foundation. It’s getting harder and harder for researchers to find the money to carry out our research – and brain cancer is no different. But it’s with the support and work of the Mark Hughes Foundation and the beanies campaign that gives us the time, space, and opportunity to find a cure. We just can’t do our work without those little beanies. In my own research, our team has been fortunate to receive an innovation grant from the Mark Hughes Foundation – just one of the ways in which buying a beanie makes it way to research. The grant was to work with our community, families and clinicians involved in a brain cancer journey, and international and homegrown expertise, to develop the very first online platform for families supporting a loved one who is on a brain cancer journey. The CarerWell platform (and app) contains the latest evidence and information about treatments, new research outcomes and discoveries, tools and resources to help people at different stages of their journey, and also an online support program for family and friends with a loved one experiencing brain cancer to help make that support and caring journey a little easier to navigate. To see what those little beanies have helped to create, visit Caring for the Carer on the Mark Hughes Foundation website.