In 2018, the AGCF awarded Dr Aime Powell the Cindy Sullivan Fellowship to begin her outstanding research project, titled Aboriginal women at increased risk of cervical cancer incidence and mortality: Quantifying the risk in an era with national prevention programs.
This project investigates why Aboriginal women continue to experience inequitable and poorer health outcomes in the prevention of cervical cancer, despite having access to the National HPV Vaccination Program and the National Cervical Screening Program.
Halfway through her Fellowship, Aime updated us on all the amazing things she has achieved and what she is doing next.
“The AGCF Research Fellowship has enabled me to increase my professional networks, gain credibility as an Early Career Researcher and investigate new projects with world experts,” she says. “Without the AGCF support this would not have been possible – thank you!”
Aime’s study includes a quantitative component that analyses linked HPV vaccination and cervical screening data for all Western Australian (WA) women. She then relinked this to another source that reports on Aboriginal status – which increased the number of women that identify as Aboriginal within the study cohort.
Already Aime has been able to develop videos that promote women’s participation in cervical cancer screening. These bring together a number of people, including cervical cancer survivors, and will make a huge difference to women and their families. You can watch them below.
Aime is excited about the future of her research and is not slowing down.
“The opportunity has arisen to develop a future research project that will investigate the acceptability and implementation of point of care HPV self-collection in rural and remote communities (with a specific emphasis on Aboriginal communities).”
Aime is also teaming up with 2017 AGCF Fellowship recipient, Dr Dane Cheasley, after meeting through the AGCF. They are now supervising a PhD research student on a project to be underpinned by linked data to investigate patterns of care and health outcomes for women with ovarian cancer in Western Australia.
“Through the introduction to Dane, I have been able to meet and learn critical lessons from another researcher. Although we are in different disciplines, I am hopeful that we will be able to develop a collaborative project that utilises both our skills sets within gynaecologic oncology.”
We are excited to see what the brilliant Aime will do next.