The 2nd ANZSSFR Annual Meeting in Adelaide

The CRE Frailty & Healthy Ageing team hosted the Australian and New Zealand Society for Sarcopenia and Frailty Research (ANZSSFR) annual meeting in Adelaide on 24-25th Nov 2017.

The event was opened by the conference convener Prof Renuka Visvanathan and an address from Hon Ken Wyatt AM, MP the Minister for Aged Care and Minister for Indigenous Health. Researchers from across Australia and around the world came together to share current research into sarcopenia and frailty.

World renowned geriatrics researcher and associate investigator with CRE in Frailty & Healthy Ageing, Prof Matteo Cesari joined the second day of the conference directly from a meeting with the WHO. Prof Cesari of the Fondazione Ca' Granda-Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico and the University of Milan (Italy) took part in the ‘Meet The Professor’ session for researchers to discuss the topic “Clinically, is it Useful to Measure Sarcopenia?”. Prof Cesari also gave the plenary lecture titled “Frailty: One Word For Multiple Applications”.

Prof Cyrus Cooper OBE, Director of the MRC Lifecourse and Epidemiology Unit at University of Southampton and Prof of Epidemiology at Oxford University travelled from the UK to present a seminar on “Sarcopenia and Physical Frailty: Conceptual Frameworks and Descriptive Epidemiology”. A/Prof Dina Lo Giudice, a geriatrician from Melbourne University, Victoria presented on “Understanding Frailty in Older (and not so old) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”. Prof Manuel Montero Odasso, Director of the Gait and Brain Laboratory at the Parkwood Institute London in Ontario, Canada also attended to discuss “Frailty and Cognitive Impairment in Older Adults: Fellow Travelers or Partners in Crime?”. Dr Olga Theou, gerokinesiologist and investigator with the CRE in Frailty & Healthy Ageing, travelled from Dalhousie University, Canada to present her research seminar titled “Are sedentary behaviours harmful for older people?”.

The conference dinner at the Adelaide Wine Centre was generously sponsored by The Hospital Research Foundation. The two day event offered opportunities for mid - early career researchers and higher degree students to present posters, abstracts and seminars of their research in various forums at the new Adelaide Health and Medical School (University of Adelaide). The conference was the largest and most well attended to date for the ANZSSFR.

The next conference will be held in Dunedin, New Zealand in Nov 2018.