About Us

Located adjacent to Blacktown Hospital, and containing research labs, teaching space and a clinic purpose designed for trials (opens in a new window), the WSU Blacktown Mt Druitt Clinical School and Research Centre is situated at the junction of academia, research, industry and public health. The Clinical School and Research Centre was opened in 2011 as a joint venture between the Western Sydney Local Health District and the School of Medicine, Western Sydney University. Since then, it has brought together clinicians, teachers and researchers, conducting a broad array of clinical and basic science projects in the fields of obesity and metabolism, endocrinology, immunity and inflammation, psychiatry and public health. Our proximity to Blacktown Hospital has enabled significant collaboration with health professionals to tackle the issues facing communities in Western Sydney, and around the world.

A massive collaborative effort is currently being put forth at the Blacktown precinct to study the effects of bariatric surgery as a treatment for obesity and obesity-related disease. National statistics from Australian sources predict that normal-weight adults will constitute less than a third of the population by 2025, and that the prevalence of obesity will have increased by 65%. We aim to generate a large, well characterised cohort of patients undergoing bariatric surgery, from which clinical specimens and information will be collected longitudinally. Performing clinical and metabolic, immune and microbial profiling, tissue banking and clinico-pathological correlation, we will aim to better understand the complex and dynamic interplay between lifestyle, metabolomics, genetics, microbiome and inflammation.