Advancing nutrition care in spinal cord injury – congratulations 2025 ANZSCoS Grant Winner Dr Priya Iyer

We are pleased to announce this year’s ANZSCoS Grant winner is Dr Priya Iyer from The University of Sydney.

Priya is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and passionate researcher with over two decades of clinical experience in spinal cord injury (SCI) and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Driven by her strong vision to transform nutritional practice, Priya’s research aims to improve long-term health outcomes for people living with SCI and TBI.

‘Being awarded this grant provides an exciting milestone in my mission to advance nutritional care for people with SCI’.

Priya’s project will include testing an existing rapid diet quality screening tool (the rPDQS) among adults with SCI to see if it is reliable and acceptable to use as part of routine care, something no one has ever looked at before in context to SCI.

Priya tells us that routine screening and assessment of diet quality in clinical and rehabilitation settings for SCI is limited due to a lack of validated tools. This was confirmed by a multinational study that Priya recently led, which examined nutritional care practices in SCI facilities across five countries. This study found that none of the sites were using a validated tool to assess diet quality.

‘This really limits clinicians’ ability to provide timely, evidence-based dietary guidance aimed at improving long-term health outcomes for people with SCI’.

This research aims to fill a critical gap and provide clinicians with a much-needed tool to support better nutritional care in SCI.

Congratulations Priya and thank you to all of the applicants.