Dr Ruth McCullagh

Ruth is a lecturer on the MSc Physiotherapy Programme in the School of Clinical Therapies, University College Cork.  Prior to working in academia Ruth worked clinically for over 25 years in Ireland and the UK. Ruth's PhD was an RCT measuring the effects of augmented exercise in frail medical inpatients. Ruth's research interests include falls, frailty and Parkinson's disease, determining optimal exercise prescription, and supporting behaviour change to maintain independence, self-efficacy and quality of life.  Ruth is the Principal Investigator of the FaME Ireland study, an evaluation of early-adopter sites of the Falls Management Exercise Programme (HRB APA 028 2022). 

Caroline Eldridge

Katherine Thackeray

Katherine has a Postgraduate Certificate in Health Services Management and a Master's in Government and Public Policy.  Katherine worked for NHS Nottingham in public health and commissioning roles for 15 years before moving to Ireland in 2011, where she has worked as a GP practice manager, and has supported a number of clinical research projects at UCC in the areas of dementia, reproductive health and diabetes care.  As research assistant for the FaME Ireland project, Katherine works alongside the PI and team, and will contribute to a range of research activities including collecting and analysing data, facilitating workshops and focus groups, and documenting results and findings.   

Edel Brennan

Edel works in the HSE as Primary Care Senior Physiotherapist and Falls Lead in CHO1.  Edel is a trained Postural Stability Instructor and Otago Leader, and works across the community to coordinate falls prevention and management programmes and services.  Edel will be coordinating the research fieldwork in the Leitrim area for FaME Ireland.  

Eibhlis Cahalane

Eibhlis is an experienced HSE senior physiotherapist based in Kerry, and works in the HSE Older Person's Services in Cork / Kerry (CHO4).  Eibhlis works with older people living with a range of conditions including stroke and dementia and falls, and is aslo a member of the HSE Postural Stability Training Committee.  Eibhlis will be coordinating research fieldwork in the Tralee early adopter site for FaME Ireland.

Vanda Cummins

Vanda is an HSE community based primary care physiotherapist providing individual and group interventions to keep people mobile in their own homes/environments and reduce need for hospital based interventions. Vanda also delivers interagency group exercise, education and socialisation programmes for older adults at risk of falls and fractures, and is interested in patient centered healthcare, improving health literacy and roll out of self management skills.

Professor Dawn Skelton

Dawn is a member of the Falls and Frailty programme within the Ageing Well Research Group. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.  As an Exercise Physiologist, she has a keen interest in exercise rehabilitation within a falls prevention scope, from the hospital-based physiotherapy delivery to the community-based specialist exercise instructor provision (FaME). Her current research ranges from motivation and patient preference to engaging the very frail, increasing adherence to long-term exercise and working with the pre-frail to prevent poor outcomes later.  

Professor Frances Horgan

Frances Horgan is Professor of Physiotherapy at the RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences. She has a strong track record in research of strategic relevance to stroke and ageing health policy in Ireland. She is co-PI on a Collaborative Doctoral Award (www.ipastar.eu) on improving acute stroke and rehabilitation care pathways. She was PI on the feasibility study of the Care to Move approach to enhance formal home support to improve and maintain functional status in older adults. Frances lectures on the BSc Physiotherapy and taught Masters in Neurology and Gerontology programmes at RCSI.  She will support intervention evaluation, analysis, interpretation of results and dissemination on the FaME Ireland project.

Professor Elizabeth Orton

Prof Orton is a Professor of Public Health at the University of Nottingham and a Consultant in Public Health in Leicestershire County Council.  Her research focuses on injury epidemiology and prevention across the life course, including home safety for young children through to falls prevention in older adults.  She is particularly interested in reducing health inequalities and understanding how best to get evidence-based interventions into public health practice, using implementation science theory to do this.  Prof Orton is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health (2014) and the Director of the Unit of Lifespan and Population Health in the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham and the Principal Investigator on two large implementation and scalability studies of FaME in the UK; PhISICAL and FLEXI and theme lead for the East Midlands ARC on Building Community Resilience and Enabling Independence.