I've worked in three countries as a researcher, and the study I will tell you about later is also a multi-country collaboration. I've enjoyed working in Australia for the past eight years, and this would only have been possible due to support from MS Australia, Murdoch University and the Perron Institute in Perth. I also work alongside excellent collaborators here in Australia. Some are also part of the current project, including Associate Professors Claudia Marck and Yasmine Probst of The University of Melbourne and the University of Wollongong, respectively, and Professor Allan Kermode of the Perron Institute. For our current project, Dr Marlena Klaic from Melbourne University, Associate Professor Susan Slatyer here at Murdoch University, and Dr Heidi Beadnall at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital are important team members. International leading researchers in multiple sclerosis (MS), Professor Rob Motl of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Associate Professor Sarah Donkers from the University of Saskatchewan are also part of our group.

My journey into MS research began somewhat serendipitously. After completing my Masters degree in physiotherapy, I was invited to apply for a PhD scholarship. This opportunity was supported by philanthropic funding from the MS Society of NHS Ayrshire and Arran, in the UK.

During my PhD, I developed, and assessed the benefits of a community exercise program for persons living with MS. The best part? That class is still running today! This experience ignited my passion for helping MS patients through exercise and rehabilitation.

Australian-led MS research is essential, and it's exciting to see the achievements of a country with a relatively small population. I'm thrilled to champion research tailored to the Australian context, as it can address specific challenges and needs of the local MS community. The collaborative efforts MS Australia fosters can more effectively influence national health policies and guidelines, ensuring they are based on comprehensive, locally relevant data.

It's exciting and essential to include community engagement in our research, which is happening more and more in MS. For example, MS Australia's Lived Experience Expert Panel (LEEP), which members of the MS community can join to help influence the direction of Australian MS research and ensure outcomes are directly beneficial to those affected by MS.

Our team has shown that exercise can improve fitness, walking mobility, cognition, fatigue, quality of life, mental health and levels of pain in MS. Yet, we have also shown that levels of exercise are low in MS. We have established that persons with MS want to receive exercise promotion from MS neurologists and nurses and that neurologists and nurses believe it is their role to promote exercise, yet consider they lack the knowledge, strategies, resources and confidence to promote exercise to people with MS. This results in multiple missed opportunities in the clinic to treat MS symptoms through exercise.

In our study, we hypothesise that a consumer co-designed exercise promotion intervention and toolkit for MS healthcare providers can increase exercise promotion in the clinic, leading to increased exercise behaviour in persons with MS who receive targeted exercise promotion.

We will develop, evaluate and test our exercise promotion intervention and toolkit in MS healthcare providers, and assess the change the toolkit has on the promotion of exercise in clients with MS. We’ll aim to learn if targeted exercise promotion in the clinic influences exercise behaviour.

Our research vision is to maximise treatment pathways for persons with MS and effectively harness the known benefits of exercise in MS through improved promotion by MS healthcare providers. We will build on our consumer-based evidence of community needs to reach this goal and co-create feasible exercise promotion interventions and toolkits for Australian MS healthcare providers. We will be leading the world in this research. Our design, team and vision indicate that our model may be replicated in other countries to address other health behaviours in MS (such as nutrition) and other clinical conditions where exercise promotion through healthcare providers will lead to improved health outcomes.

Although I don't always work in the lab, when I do, it's an exercise physiology lab where we might deliver exercise programs and measure health outcomes such as walking, balance, fitness and strength. It's rewarding as, in my area, you can see improvements very quickly when people practice positive health behaviours, such as being physically active. Our current study will all take place in the community though, not in the lab. We can measure health outcomes related to physical activity in several ways. Just the same as you can be physically active in several ways too.