Saran Chamberlain Asia Pacific Stroke Conference 2024

Saran Chamberlain

Saran Chamberlain is a lived experience researcher, advocate, educator, and co-design specialist with 12 years of experience navigating life after stroke. Her work focuses on improving psychosocial support, inclusion, accessibility, and creating opportunities for people with lived experience to influence research, education, and health systems. Saran contributes across stroke research, health translation, and service improvement initiatives, bringing lived expertise to strengthen relevance, implementation, and person-centred approaches to care. She is passionate about building the capability of both researchers and people with lived experience to work in partnership in ways that are meaningful, psychologically safe, and lead to genuine impact. She holds several leadership and advisory roles, including membership of the Stroke Foundation Research Advisory Council, the South Australian Stroke Community of Practice, and the Australian Stroke Clinical Registry (AuSCR) Clinical and Quality Improvement Committee, helping ensure lived experience perspectives inform national stroke quality improvement activities and support more responsive models of care. Saran also contributes to multiple national and international stroke research programs and has been involved in international work through the ISRRA Roundtable, helping develop recommendations to support researchers to meaningfully involve people with lived experience of stroke in research. This work focuses on strengthening researcher capability and embedding inclusive approaches to collaboration. Alongside her research involvement, Saran delivers education and workshops for healthcare professionals, researchers, and university students, sharing lived experience perspectives to strengthen training and improve translation of evidence into practice. She has particular interests in psychosocial wellbeing, participation, sex and intimacy after stroke, and building capability for meaningful lived experience involvement in research and healthcare. As a young stroke survivor, Saran is committed to improving connection, inclusion, and access to support for others navigating stroke. Her work is driven by the belief that lived experience expertise is essential to creating health systems, research, and communities that are more responsive, equitable, and person-centred.