Partner in focus: Lisa Murphy, CEO of Stroke Foundation

We spoke with Lisa Murphy, CEO of Stroke Foundation, who explains the organisation’s vision and recent innovations.

What is the vision of Stroke Foundation?

Stroke Foundation's vision is A world free from disability and suffering caused by stroke and we work towards this through our Mission pillars of Prevention, Treatment and Recovery. This means that we work across the stroke continuum, supporting survivors of stroke, carers, health professionals, governments and the public to reduce the impact of stroke on the Australian community.

In prevention, we ensure people understand how stroke can be prevented and by learning the signs of stroke and acting quickly, how they can significantly improve the outcomes for those who have strokes.

In treatment, we work in partnership with the clinical community throughout the stroke Learning Health System with our National Stroke Audit, Living Stroke Guidelines and quality improvement activities. We work to ensure all people who have strokes are treated in specialised stroke units and discharged from hospital with appropriate care plans and support.

In recovery, we enable people to live their best possible life after stroke through tailored information and support such as discharge support tools, peer-to-peer support and our helpline StrokeLine.

We also fund research across the stroke continuum.

We do all this through co-design with people with a lived experience of stroke.

We are the Voice of Stroke in Australia.

What are some of the challenges you face?

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact Australia’s health services in the areas of funding constraints, workforce shortages and ambulance ramping. In stroke specifically, we are yet to see the re-establishment of the numbers of pre-pandemic stroke units, which provide the best-practice stroke care.

Because of this impact on the health system, we have found that we are filling in the gaps. For example, StrokeLine, our free helpline staffed by health professionals, has seen a 738 per cent increase in complex calls from 2021 to 2023.

We have also seen a worrying 34 per cent increase since 2022 in people calling StrokeLine with current stroke symptoms instead of calling an ambulance. Our challenge is that we do not receive any government funding for this service. Indeed, 75 per cent of our funding comes from donations, mostly from survivors of stroke, their families and carers. This is not right and something we are advocating strongly to change.

Tell us about one of your organisation's recent innovations?

Stroke Foundation has developed and launched an Australia-first Aphasia Handbook in partnership with the Australian Aphasia Association and co-designed it with people with aphasia, which is a language and communication disorder. The Aphasia Handbook ensures that stroke patients with aphasia now have access to a tailored resource and appropriate information after diagnosis.

Stroke Foundation has also developed and launched our 'My Stroke Journey' discharge support tool for diverse populations. 'My Stroke Journey' is now a suite of resources in eight different languages, as well as a specific version called 'Our Stroke Journey’ for First Nations peoples, and another called ‘Our Family’s Stroke Journey’ for parents of children who have had stroke.

What do you value most about your partnership with Healthdirect Australia?

Healthdirect is a trusted resource of the Australian community so our partnership with Healthdirect gives us an opportunity to reach more Australians with our life-saving messages and life-changing information and support resources. Our partnership facilitates a sharing of the knowledge and resources that improve health outcomes for all Australians.