The CAH was well represented at the Australian Association for Adolescent Health (AAAH) 2022 Youth Health conference held in Melbourne from 7-9 November. This was the first time the conference had been held in person since 2019:
- Members from the Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) for Driving Global Investment in Adolescent Health hosted a 90-minute symposium, Not Mutually Exclusive – leveraging lived and professional experience to form a youth advocates group. The presentation included four members from the CRE Youth Advocate TEam (CREYATE), Ivy Craw, Angelica Ojinnaka, Luo Li and Sophia Garlick Bock as well as CI Prof Susan Sawyer, PhD candidate Karly Cini and the CRE coordinator, Molly O’Sullivan. The presentation focused on CREYATE’s experience of being youth advocates for the CRE and the importance of connecting as a group.
- Aneta Bandilovska, UOM Department of Paediatrics/MCRI Honours student, supervised by Dr Monika Raniti (primary), Prof Susan Sawyer and Dr Ruth Aston (MGSE, Unimelb) presented her research thesis at the conference ‘Whole-school approaches to health and wellbeing: Exploring the knowledge and attitudes of Victorian pre-service teachers’.
- Dr Jen Marino presented Ms Aoife Glacken’s B Biomedical Science Honour’s project at the meeting, research that was undertaken in collaboration with Prof Susan Sawyer on ‘Experiences of family and partner support in fertility decision-making among adolescents and young adults with cancer: A national Australian study’.
- Dr Jen Marino presented ‘ Mental health and risk behaviours are associated with lower educational attainment: Analysis of Raine Study Generation 2 cohort at 23 years’.
- Ella Cehun, Medical student, Deakin University, presented ‘Evaluation of the ‘You Can Stay’ accommodation support program for adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer’, a collaboration with Sony Foundation, led by Prof Susan Sawyer.
- The University of Melbourne provided funding support to the conference that enabled the Adolescent Health & Wellbeing Postgraduate course to be promoted at the conference. This was staffed by Dr Anitra Wierenga and Kristina Bennett. A number of the program’s Masters students also presented their Masters projects at the conference.
