Julie Bernhardt

Julie Bernhardt AM FAHMS is an Australian physiotherapist and clinician scientist, a Principal Research Fellow and an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and Clinical Head of the Stroke Division at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne. Bernhardt is Principal Investigator of the 'A Very Early Rehabilitation Trial' (AVERT) and a leader in the field of stroke recovery.

Bernhardt is the director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) in Stroke Rehabilitation and Brain Repair, a collaboration between the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, the Hunter Medical Research Institute and other institutions.[1] She founded and chaired the international Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation Roundtable (SRRR), a partnership involving leading stroke experts which aims to advance stroke rehabilitation research.[2] She led the second SRRR in 2018, on developing international clinical trials to improve stroke treatment.[3]

Education

In 1985, Bernhardt completed a Bachelor of Applied Science in Physiotherapy at the Lincoln Institute of Health Sciences, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.[4] From 1990 to 1995 she undertook a Masters of Applied Science at La Trobe University where she also received her PhD in 1999.[4] The focus of her PhD research was on the hemiplegic upper limb, and she developed new methods of testing the accuracy of observational kinematic assessment of upper limb dysfunction.[5][6][7]

Career

Bernhardt began work as a Physiotherapy Research Coordinator at Melbourne Health in 1989,[8] then after completing her PhD, she was a senior physiotherapist at the Austin and Royal Melbourne Hospitals from 1999–2008.[9] She became a Professor in Neuroscience at La Trobe University, Melbourne in 2006. Bernhardt is Head of Stroke Division at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the University of Melbourne.[4]

In 2004, Bernhardt joined the Florey Institute to become Principal Investigator of the AVERT Early Intervention Research Group. AVERT was the largest acute stroke rehabilitation trial in the world. Over 2000 stroke patients were recruited from 56 acute stroke units in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, and Singapore from 2006–2014.[10] Within the AVERT group, Bernhardt led a team of over 1000 clinicians and researchers. The trial aimed to identify if receiving very early mobilisation (VEM) within 24 hours of stroke is beneficial for stroke recovery, and if so, how much and what frequency is best.[11] The studies in AVERT focused on understanding how these early exercise-based interventions after stroke may alter bone, muscle and brain.[9] The results of AVERT were presented at the European Stroke Organisation Conference in Glasgow, April, 2015. While AVERT was completed in 2016, Bernhardt continues to lead the extension of the trial, AVERT-DOSE (Determining Optimal early rehabilitation after Stroke).[12] This trial tests eight different mobility training regimens to see what dose of mobility training is best early after stroke. AVERT-DOSE is recruiting over 2500 patients in six countries: Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Singapore, and India.[12]

From 2006-2014, Bernhardt was a non-executive director for the National Stroke Foundation. She has been on the Steering Committee of the Australian Stroke Research Network since 2011 and from 2013–16, she was Co-Chair for Australasian Stroke Trials Network.[13] Since 2015, Bernhardt has also been the Director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Stroke Rehabilitation,[1] which aims to accelerate discovery and translation in the field of stroke rehabilitation[14] She was Chair of the research committee for the World Federation of Neurorehabilitation from 2016-2020. Bernhardt has been on the board of the World Stroke Organisation since July 2014 and Chair of the research committee of WSO since April 2017.[13] She also founded and leads the Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation Roundtable, which brings together researchers, clinicians, funders and consumers to identify key stroke research priority areas.[2]

Bernhardt has published 345 scholarly works, most in the field of stroke rehabilitation.[15]

Personal

Bernhardt lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and teenage son.[16]

Awards and honours
  • Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship (2012)[17]
  • The Australian Financial Review and Westpac 100 Women of Influence Award, Global category winner (2016)[18]
  • Austin Medical Research Foundation Distinguished Scientist (2016)[19]
  • American Heart Association Stroke Rehabilitation Award (2016)[20]
  • Viscount Linley Award, Stroke Association (2016)[13]
  • Chief Executive Women Scholarship MIT Sloan (2016)[21]
  • Princess Margaret Memorial Lecture invitee, Stroke Association UK (2015)[22]
  • National Australia Bank Change Champion of the Year (2015) [23]
  • Honorary Life Membership, Stroke Foundation Australia (2018)
  • Member of the Order of Australia (2019) "for significant service to medical research, and as an advocate for women in science" [13]
  • Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (2020)[24]

Advocacy

In 2013, Bernhardt founded the Women in Science Parkville Precinct (WiSPP) Collective Impact initiative to address the gender inequity that she had witnessed in medical research.[25] This initiative aims to improve the systems that limit the advancement of women and diversity of leadership across five of Melbourne's medical research institutes. Bernhardt was invited to talk at the 2016 World Economic Forum in Tianjin, China about gender equity[26] and is also an author on a paper about gender equity in Stroke Society of Australasia.[27]

References
  1. "Our People". Stroke Recovery Research CRE. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  2. Bernhardt, Julie; Hayward, Kathryn; Kwakkel, Gert; Ward, Nick; Wolf, Steven; Borschmann, Karen; Krakauer, John; Boyd, Lara; Carmichael, S. Thomas; Corbett, Dale; Cramer, Steven (21 September 2017). "Agreed Definitions and a Shared Vision for New Standards in Stroke Recovery Research: The Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation Roundtable Taskforce". Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair. 31 (9): 793–799. doi:10.1177/1545968317732668. PMID 28934920.
  3. Borschmann, Karen. "Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation Roundtable – June 2018 update". Stroke Recovery Research CRE. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
  4. "ORCID". orcid.org. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
  5. Bernhardt, J. A. (1998). Observational kinematic assessment of upper limb movement. Doctoral dissertation, La Trobe University.
  6. Bernhardt, Julie; Bate, Patricia J; Matyas, Thomas A (1 March 1998). "Accuracy of Observational Kinematic Assessment of Upper-Limb Movements". Physical Therapy. 78 (3): 259–270. doi:10.1093/ptj/78.3.259. ISSN 0031-9023. PMID 9520971.
  7. Bernhardt, Julie; Ellis, Paul; Denisenko, Sonia; Hill, Keith (1998). "Changes in balance and locomotion measures during rehabilitation following stroke". Physiotherapy Research International. 3 (2): 109–122. doi:10.1002/pri.130. ISSN 1358-2267. PMID 9648176.
  8. "Neurosciences Centre of Research Excellence: Staff". Neurosciences Centre of Research Excellence. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
  9. "Julie Bernhardt". LinkedIn. Archived from the original on 6 November 2014. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
  10. "A Very Early Rehabilitation Trial (AVERT) - Database Projects". Florey. Retrieved 19 September 2018.
  11. Bernhardt, Julie; Churilov, Leonid; Ellery, Fiona; Collier, Janice; Chamberlain, Jan; Langhorne, Peter; Lindley, Richard; Moodie, Marj; Dewey, Helen; Thrift, Amanda; Donnan, Geoff (7 June 2016). "Prespecified dose-response analysis for A Very Early Rehabilitation Trial (AVERT)". Neurology. 23 (86): 2138–2145. doi:10.1212/WNL.0000000000002459. PMC 4898313. PMID 26888985.
  12. "AVERT-DOSE (Determining Optimal early rehabilitation after StrokE): A multi-arm covariate-adjusted, response-adaptive randomised controlled trial". Research Data Australia. Retrieved 19 September 2018.
  13. "Australia Day 2019 Honours List". Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia. Archived from the original on 27 May 2019. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
  14. "Our Research". Stroke Recovery Research CRE. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  15. "Prof Julie Bernhardt". findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au. Retrieved 10 April 2022.
  16. "Life as a scientist can mean directly helping those who suffer". Women's Agenda. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
  17. "Bernhardt, Julie's Fellowship Profile". Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
  18. "100 Women of Influence 2016". afr.com. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
  19. "Awards supported by the Austin Medical Research Foundation, AMRF, Melbourne Australia". Austin Medical Research Foundation. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
  20. "American Stroke Association honors nine outstanding contributors to stroke, research". American Heart Association. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
  21. "Our 2016 CEW Scholars - Chief Executive Women". Chief Executive Women. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
  22. "UKSF Conference 2015 - At A Glance Programme" (PDF). Stroke Association. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
  23. "Winners announced: NAB Womens Agenda Leadership Awards 2015". Angela Priestley.
  24. "Academy elects 28 new Fellows". AAHMS - Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. 14 October 2020. Retrieved 7 December 2020.
  25. "Team 1". WiSPP. Retrieved 10 April 2022.
  26. "Australia Day Honour for Professor Julie Bernhardt". Retrieved 10 April 2022.
  27. Carcel, Cheryl; Woodward, Mark; Anderson, Craig S.; Delcourt, Candice; Bernhardt, Julie; Gall, Seana (2022). "Gender Equity in Leadership and Conferences of the Stroke Society of Australasia". Cerebrovascular Diseases. 51 (1): 125–130. doi:10.1159/000517453. ISSN 1015-9770. PMID 34265764. S2CID 235959393.
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