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Dr Stephen Hughes
University of Sydney Stephen Hughes BPharm MPhil PhD is a lecturer at The University of Sydney Pharmacy School (SPS), Faculty of Medicine and Health, and community pharmacist of over 30 years. As a qualitative researcher, he explores the experiences of practitioners and patients managing long-term conditions, particularly around practitioner behaviours, support for self-management, patient-centred care, goal-setting and shared decision making, and implementation and evaluation of services. He has a particular interest in management of respiratory conditions and a long association with national efforts to support all people with asthma to live well with their asthma, including populations generally overlooked and underrepresented in research and practice, and is committed to amplifying their voices. Project Status: In progress commenced 2024 Grant Type: Project Grant |
About the research
Women in Australia die from asthma at nearly twice the rate as men and those over 45 years of age account for 96% of these deaths. Yet little has changed in asthma guidelines about how healthcare practitioners should support women with asthma to address this inequity.
Many women aged 45 years and older face challenges to managing their asthma influenced by access to healthcare services, where they reside, their level of financial security, holding various gendered roles such as family caregiving, the precarity of homelessness (increasingly in older women), cultural and linguistic diversity, and the presence of other physical and psychological conditions.
This project aims to conduct authentic and in-depth focus group conversations with women over 45 years about their asthma and healthcare support for self-management to develop new ways that healthcare can support all older women with asthma to live well.
We are seeking to challenge ideas about patient-centredness and shared decision making as they relate to practitioners providing self-management support for older women with asthma. We aim to improve how healthcare practitioners and organisations can support women with asthma on what support is meaningful, helpful or harmful.
Why was funding this research so important?
As the leading chronic condition in Australia, asthma exerts a heavy toll on the population. Older women bear a disproportionate brunt from this, and are much more likely than men or women of other age groups to experience severe complications of their asthma. This important work aims to level the playing field, so the burden and complications of asthma among older women are no greater than they are for other sections of the population with asthma. For too long we’ve just been watching this unfair burden. This team is finally taking action.
