Dr Joyce Siette
 | Research Theme Fellow Health and Wellbeing Improving dementia awareness and decreasing dementia risk.Dr Siette works to prevent dementia, improve quality of life in dementia, and support individuals to age successfully.
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Overview
While dementia is on the rise worldwide, it doesn’t have to be that way. There is evidence that suggests much of our dementia risk can be avoided through simple modifications to our lifestyle.
Dr Joyce Siette is a health services researcher whose mission is to contribute to reducing population-wide dementia risk and cognitive impairment through effective and acceptable dementia prevention public health approaches.
She leads a program of research to identify how we can best prevent dementia by creating effective lifestyle changes for seniors such as sustained physical activity and healthy diet.
She is working to find out how social connections can support healthy ageing, and is promoting dementia awareness campaigns throughout the community with her initiative, Brain Bootcamp, which uses everyday activities of cognitive training, socialisation and physical activity to support older adults’ brain health and wellbeing.
We need effective approaches to increase awareness that the power to change is in our hands, and guided steps to drive home lifestyle changes that are sustainable and empowering.
Impact
Implementing innovative, best practice approaches to support healthy brain ageing will result in shorter and less frequent stays in hospital and visits to primary care, as well as better wellbeing for residents living in aged care facilities. This will also achieve general health gains for the public.
Dr Siette’s aged care work has contributed to re-designing digital client management systems to capture social metrics (quality of life and social wellbeing) of people receiving aged care services. These results were raised in the Royal Commission proceedings and contributed to recommendations for quality indicators that capture quality of life consistently.
She founded and established early efficacy and feasibility of an innovative public health approach, Brain Bootcamp, which has reached 800 seniors, 72% of whom experienced potential reduction in cognitive impairment, 81% maintained or improved their brain health, and 92% achieved their brain health goal during the program. Her public health campaigns targeting dementia risk have reduced the risk in 7/10 adults (out of 380) and increased awareness for at least three months.
The main impact is witnessing participants' delight at being more brain healthy following the Brain Bootcamp.
Career
Dr Siette has a B Psychology (Hons) and PhD in Psychology.
She commenced her research journey at the University of New South Wales, working with older rats, and found that physical exercise completely reversed the degradation accompanied with sedentary ageing in the brain.
She then worked as a Programme Manager in social psychiatry at Queen Mary, University of London, the only WHO Collaborating Centre for Mental Health Service Development, where she led a team to evaluate the impact of befriending programs for people with psychosis.
Between 2015 and 2021, she was a Research Fellow at Macquarie University and worked with data to build a more sensitive health informatics framework for older adults in aged care.
Dr Siette is now based at Western Sydney University to continue unravelling how digital health and informatics can support healthy brain ageing. She is a Research Theme Fellow in Health and Wellbeing at Western Sydney University and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation.
She has 59 publications in digital informatics and ageing, with a field weighted citation index of 3.82 in social sciences.
Dr Siette is the Co-Chair for the AAG NSW Division, Associate Editor for the Australasian Journal on Ageing and Editorial Member for BMC Geriatrics. She has received multiple awards for her work, including the 2020 BUPA Commendation Award for Emerging Health Researcher and the 2021 Future of Ageing Award for Brain Bootcamp and the 2021 Emerging Researchers in Ageing Conference Innovation in Ageing Research Award.
Key outputs
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajag.13049
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/6/e054657.abstract
https://bmcgeriatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12877-021-02352-1
https://bmcgeriatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12877-021-02254-2
Collaboration
Dr Siette is currently seeking collaborations with ethnic communities and peak bodies to support healthy ageing initiatives.
Connect
| joyce.siette@westernsydney.edu.au | |
| Phone | +61 2 9772 6802 |
| Location | Western Sydney University Westmead campus |
| Room | U.6.26 |
