Professor Piers Dawes

Professor

School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences

Overview

My research concerns i) understanding causes and impacts of hearing impairment, particularly in the context of multimorbidity in older age, ii) prevention and treatment of hearing impairment, and iii) hearing service development and evaluation. My research involves epidemiological modelling with population data sets, clinical trials and hearing health policy. I have authored over130 publications in peer reviewed journals and books, and I frequently present invited and keynote addresses at international conferences. I have received the British Society of Audiology’s TS Littler prize for services to audiology and a prestigious US-UK Fulbright award.

I have been awarded 10 grants as principal investigator in the last 5 years totalling >AUD$14.5 million from competitive sources including the NHMRC, the NIHR, the Alzheimer’s Society UK, the European Commission, industry and charity funders. This funding includes an EU Horizon 2020 grant of €6.2 million (as joint PI for “Ears, Eyes and Mind: The “SENSE-Cog Project” to improve mental well-being for elderly Europeans with sensory impairment”), and two NHMRC Medical Research Future Fund awards ($1.2 million as CI for “SENSEcog aged care: Hearing and vision support to improve quality of life for people living with dementia in residential aged care”; AUD$1.3 million for "Home hearing and vision care to improve quality of life for people with dementia and carers"; and an AUD$0.9 million NHMRC targetted hearing research award (as CI for "Improving access to the hearing services program for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds"). I have strong links with hearing industry partners and have received research funding (total >AUD$500,000) from major hearing aid companies Starkey, Oticon, Phonak and the hearing industry research consortium. I have a position at the University of Manchester with on-going involvement (as CI and co-I) in projects funded by the NIHR, the ESRC, the Alzheimer’s Society and the RNID.

Research Interests

  • Research interests
    hearing loss; tinnitus, vision loss; assessment; dementia; healthy ageing; psychosocial interventions; mental well-being; aged care; health policy and ageing; public health; dementia; health inequalities; hearing screening

Research Impacts

My research is widely cited in national and international guidelines & policy, including the 2016 US National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine report ‘Hearing Health Care for Adults: Priorities for Improving Access and Affordability’; the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance ‘Hearing Loss in adults: Assessment and management’; the Australian Parliamentary report on hearing loss ‘Still waiting to be heard’; the 2020 Lancet report on dementia prevention and care; and the WHO guidelines ‘Risk reduction of cognitive decline and dementia’. My research has global impact, including authorship of the first international guidelines on assessment and management of hearing/vision impairment for people with dementia and development and publication of alternative versions of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (internationally the most used cognitive screening test) for people with hearing or vision impairment.

My work on developing European networks for consumer and community involvement (CCI) of older adults with lived experience of hearing/vision and cognitive difficulties to inform multi-centre health research was identified for a keynote presentation to open the 2018 INVOLVE (the UK NIHR CCI organization) CCI conference and is cited as a gold standard example by the European INTERDEM initiative to guide integrated biomedical and psychosocial dementia research.

I am on the editorial board of Ear and Hearing, the International Journal of Audiology, and the Journal of Audiology & Otology. I am a peer reviewer for >30 journals, as well as the NHMRC, the NIHR, the ESRC, the MRC and the RNID. I represent the University of Queensland on the Hearing Health Sector Alliance and I am the chair of the Hearing Health Sector Alliance's aged care working group. I am on the Research Committee of the Deafness Foundation.

Publications

View all Publications

Supervision

  • Doctor Philosophy

  • Doctor Philosophy

  • Doctor Philosophy

View all Supervision

Publications

Journal Article

Conference Publication

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

  • Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

  • Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

  • Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors: