Dr Sujita Narayan
Sydney School of Public Health
Faculty of Medicine and Health
Dr Sujita Narayan is an Academic Fellow at the Sydney Musculoskeletal Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney. She is an early career researcher, with over 10 years’ experience in examining the quality use of medicines in older adults. Prior to pursuing her research interests, Sujita trained as a pharmacist at the Fiji School of Medicine and has practiced in hospital and community settings, including resource limited settings. She specialised in the management of people living with HIV in her role as the STI/HIV Regional Pharmacist for 13 countries in the Pacific, and was involved in pooled procurement of antiretroviral medicines, clinical care and contributing to the upgrade of standard treatment guidelines in reducing transmission of sexually transmitted infections from parent to child. She completed her Master of Pharmacy Practice from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Following this she pursued her PhD examining the pharmacoepidemiological approaches to examine preventive medicines and multimorbidity in older people at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Her seminal research during this time was the development and validation of the Medicines Comorbidity Index (MCI), a medicine-based index, specifically for older people, to quantify multimorbidity and predict outcomes of hospitalisation and mortality. In her role as a Postdoctoral Fellow, Sujita continued her research interests in vulnerable subgroup populations such as people with dementia, older people approaching end-of-life and those with life limiting illnesses. Her current research focuses on quality use of commonly prescribed pain medicines in older adults.
Sujita’s main research interests are patient safety and quality use of medicines in older people.
Her previous research explored the trends in the utilisation of preventive and potentially inappropriate medicines in the older population, factors associated with adverse health outcomes and reducing unnecessary or harmful medicines as older adults approach end-of-life. She has special interests in medicine use in people with dementia.
Her current work focuses on the utilisation, safety, and efficacy of commonly prescribed pain medicines in older adults
I have co-supervised 3 Bachelor of Pharmacy 4th year Honours students (2019 – 2021; all completed). These students presented their research at international conferences (Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association Conference (APSA) and Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists (ASCEPT). I have supported all students to publish, with some publications as primary authors, evidenced by 4 publications (Goradia. S and Tay. HP). Currently, I supervise 4 Masters School of Public Health Capstone students.
| Project title | Research student |
|---|---|
| Pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies for the management of musculoskeletal conditions. | Lisa VIZZA |
