In this ISLAND Newsletter

• Wishing you happy holidays for 2023!
• PhD Student Cindy and Essential Tremor Research
• Thanking you for your time!
• Mental Health Helplines

On behalf of the ISLAND Project team, we wish you and your families a safe holiday period and send you our best wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2024.

We greatly value your ongoing participation in this research study and I take this newsletter as another opportunity to say thank you. None of what we are doing in ISLAND would be possible without your participation and generosity. As you will be aware, our overall goal is to reduce the incidence of dementia in Tasmania. Thank you for your part in helping us to achieve that. 

I'm delighted that we have been able to visit communities and hold three very successful face to face information sessions across the state this year. These visits and events are a great opportunity for you to see our research team face to face and for us to show our appreciation to you. 

We’ve made great progress during 2023. We continue to directly engage with 14,000 Tasmanians through ISLAND and we have raised awareness about dementia risk with even more of our population through the many face to face and online events we have undertaken over the year. We have released more papers from ISLAND research and continue to see that people who are involved in ISLAND are making positive changes to their dementia risk profile. We take great pride in the hope that this translates to improving brain health in our population. 

Particular thanks to the participants who completed their October surveys, cognitive tests and who gave a blood donation. These are the core components of ISLAND's research and if you can only manage a few activities each year, we'd appreciate it if you would consider these three.

We have been very lucky again to receive the help from our fabulous volunteer network this year. Thank you to those of you who have helped our Conversation Starters focus groups and to our clinic volunteers who help us to deliver our excellent clinical service every Wednesday and stay on top of our research data input. Thanks also to our sponsors listed below that have greatly assisted us in running this unique project.

Again, my very best wishes all for the festive season and the year ahead. The project team will be taking some well-deserved leave over the Christmas and New Year period and will be back on Tuesday 2nd January. 

PhD candidate Cindy and Essential Tremor Research

Some of you have been kind enough to come to our clinic and do a range of movement tests. Having members of the ISLAND cohort do these tests allows us to compare data from people who do not have changes to their cognition with data from patients who are referred to our cognition clinic because of concerns about their memory. This will be a valuable comparison that, hopefully, will help validate these tests as ways to pick up early cognitive decline. 

Cindy (pictured) is a PhD student interested in essential tremor disorder – a neurological condition that causes hands to shake rhythmically. Shaking occurs with even simple everyday tasks and can be aggravated by stress, tiredness, and caffeine. Studies have showed that adults who develop a tremor after the age of 60 (late-onset) are at particularly high risk for developing dementia. Cindy’s research is particularly interested in examining the tremor qualities and upper limb movement characteristics of late-onset essential tremor, and exploring the association between late-onset essential tremor and cognition.  

For our research, Cindy and the research team, put electrodes on skin over the muscles in your forearm. The team then records muscle activity while your arm is stationary and then when you complete a variety of movements. There’s some information via this link that you might find interesting. As noted above, our research is not for muscular or nerve disorders, we use EMG to quantify tremor and will focus on advancing our knowledge on the association between tremor and cognitive function. 

If you'd like to be involved, keep an eye on your emails. Cindy and the team send regular invitations and we hope to invite as many of you as possible, over time. 

Thank you for your blood samples

Thank you to the nearly 1100 people who came to either Hobart, Launceston or Burnie to give us a blood sample this year. We know that a number of you travelled a long way to get there. It is great for us to see such strong support for this project. 

We have just published a paper based on your 2021 blood samples and this 2023 collection will now give us the power to build on this and see how people's biomarkers change over time.

Mental Health Helplines

If you, or anyone else, need help now you can call 000 or Lifeline on 13 11 14 - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

Several organisations provide support and education about mental health, some of the main groups are included below and a full list can be found at Health Direct. 

Beyond Blue - raising awareness about depression and anxiety and reducing stigma. Call 1300 22 4636, 24 hours/7days a week.

Blue Knot Foundation - national centre of excellence for complex trauma. Call 1300 657 380, Monday - Sunday between 9am and 5pm. 

FriendLine supports anyone feeling lonely and wanting a chat. Call 1800 424 287, 7 days a week.

MensLine Australia offers support to Australian men - 1300 789 978, 24 hours/7 days a week.

The ISLAND Project team are taking a break between December 24 and returning on January 2, 2024.

Thank you for working with us in 2023 - we look forward to engaging with you throughout next year. In 2024, we will bringing some new developments to ISLAND that we hope you will enjoy being engaged in.

Our very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to all our ISLAND members.

The University of Tasmania received funding from the Australian Government. Views and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of its authors, and may not be the same as those held by the Department of Health.

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