It was a great night for EB and DEBRA at the Irish Medical Times Irish Healthcare Awards last night. Dr. Rosemary Joan Gowran, who has been working closely with DEBRA and the Crumlin and James’s medical teams, won the ‘Clinical Research Associate of the Year’ award, for her work on EB.

Rosie is an occupational therapist based in the University of Limerick. She has invested huge time, effort and a large chunk of herself, into her DEBRA Ireland-funded project on a ‘stakeholder-centred approach to develop sustainable healthcare support services for EB’. Her approach has delved deep into the strengths and weaknesses of healthcare support services for EB and has brought together many of those in the wide circle of people who play a role in delivering those services. Along the way, Rosie became completely smitten by the people she met who live with EB and she hopes to continue her research into a phase two. For all those reasons, we are beyond delighted that she was recognised last night for the excellence of her work. Congratulations Rosie!

Rosie would like to thank all those who participated in and contributed to this research….

“I worked closely with DEBRA Ireland’s research manager Dr Avril Kennan and CEO Mr Jimmy Fearon, to understand more of the complexities and challenges of  living with EB.   5 MSc (Professional Qualification) Occupational Therapy graduates were involved in the research Irene Mulcahy, Siobhan Marshall, Sile Ní Mhaille,  Sarah Beasley and Mark Devlin ; their valuable work assisted  with data collection and analysis of individual stakeholder perspectives.”