Dale W Edgar

Associate Professor Dale Edgar B.Phty (Hons First), PhD

Research Fellow, The Institute for Health Research, Head – Burn Injury Research Node,

The University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA).

Sept 2025 - Assoc Prof Dale Edgar’s experience stems from his work as a senior physiotherapist and translational researcher for over 30 years. For >25 years he has been devoted to the specialization in provision and improvement of burn survivor and acute trauma rehabilitation in a number of Australian burns and plastic surgery (trauma) units. His deep engagement with consumers began in 1996, working clinically with patients with burn injury. As a physiotherapist, it is not uncommon to spend 3 – 4 hours each day with patients providing acute care and rehab. Understanding the gaps in post-burn monitoring, he developed a patient-centric battery of outcome measures as a clinical and research platform to improve post-burn consumer long term quality of life during his PhD. Dale’s involvement with burn patients and consumers expanded greatly as the President of the Australian and New Zealand Burn Association (ANZBA: 2006-2009). During his academic career, Dale has mentored: Honours (17); Grad Cert (14); Grad Dip (14); Masters (20); PhD (12) students to completion and has four higher degree research programs in progress (3 Masters, 1 PhD). In recognition of his leadership, research and contributions to burn rehabilitation across the globe, he was awarded the Andre Zagame Rehabilitation Specialist Prize by the ISBI in 2012 and again in 2018. His passion moving forward is to revolutionize the rehabilitation treatment of patients with injury and burn trauma, to be responsive to accurate and systematic measurement of severity and outcomes. Through education in, and the establishment of, outcome-based care, modern health systems will reap benefits from embedded research evidence and further, be able to direct health resource usage. His aim is to provide clinicians with the tools to optimize and improve the traumatic injury survivor journey to recovery anywhere in the world. In 2022, in addition to his research activities, CI Edgar returned to clinical work for 9 months to refresh his understanding of the post-COVID consumer interface and the complete inpatient journey from ED to ICU, medical and surgical wards, as well as exposure to inpatient rehabilitation, mental health and palliative care.

Grants, Awards and Publications: CI Edgar has 150+ career publications, 48% as first or last author. Since his PhD award in 2010, has 100+ peer-reviewed publications accepted; received seven individual and team awards and won $6.5M in competitive and philanthropic grants to support collaborative research.

Research Impact Examples:

Translation to international policy and practice: In 2015, CI Edgar coordinated 40+ co-authors as Chief Editor of the LWW published book: Burn Trauma Rehabilitation: Allied Health Practice Guidelines. Evidence based guidance for contemporary rehabilitation post-burn. The publication directly informed the global burn care guidelines published by the International Society for Burn Injuries in 2016.

Knowledge impact and potential international health impact: In July 2025, the Top 10 Global Prioritised Research Questions were released. This sentinel work was the culmination of the James Lind Alliance Global Burn Injury Priority Setting Partnership Steering Committee involving clinicians and consumers establishing a framework for setting regional, national and local burn research priorities. Assoc Prof Edgar was an integral member of the Committee at inception in October 2021 and actively and regularly contributed to developing and propagating two global surveys of burn clinicians, burn survivors and carers of paediatric burn survivors, interpreting results and drafting and editing of publications arising. These outputs will drive the priorities of research and burn care improvement moving forward.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dale led the establishment of the Perth node of the ISARIC-WHO Global COVID-19 Characterisation Trial. This activity led to the collection and biobanking of biosamples which have been the basis for a number of sentinel publications by the Australian National Phenome Centre. During this time and since, he was awarded a $200K grant (WA DoH COVID Fund) as Chief Investigator for the Life After COVID-19 (LATER-19) Trial which was conducted in 2020/21 and resulted in research methods and Long-COVID publications. This work has helped to inform the Australian Post-Acute Sequalae of COVID-19 (PASC) Plan released in February 2024 with additional publications pending.