Author Archives: pamela

COVID-19: An Update: What have we learnt over the last 12 months?

Never in the field of health was so much learned by so many in so few months.  This, the opening Grand Round for 2021 will recap the lessons from last year, take stock of where we are in February 2021, describe the complex situation with vaccines, and look to what the year might hold for the pandemic and children in Australia and countries around the world.  Topics will include: Why is COVID-19 less severe in children?  What is the role of schools in transmission and what is the impact of new variants?  Vaccines: who, when and how? The indirect effects of Covid: poverty and malnutrition, measles, loss of education, and child marriage.

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Planetary Health: Safeguarding Health in the Anthropocene Epoch

In this talk, Professor Tony Capon will introduce the findings of the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health which published the report Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch in 2015, and canvass the implications of these findings for the future protection and promotion of human health and wellbeing.

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Health professional education: past, present and possibilities

The RCH Handbook is part of the history of education at the Royal Children’s Hospital. It is 56 years old (1st ed 1964). The Handbook is a trusted guide to managing common and serious childhood illnesses, widely used by students and practitioners across medical, nursing, and allied health fields. In our 150th year we celebrate the launch of the 10th edition of the RCH Handbook while looking forward to what next.

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Disability and family violence: learning from the voice of lived experience

Interpersonal violence against people with disabilities is a major public health concern. The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences enhance the already increased risk for abuse among people with disabilities. This Grand Round provides both clinical strategies and a broader call to action for addressing family violence and coercive control against people with disabilities.

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Children’s rights and healthcare: reflections in NAIDOC week 2020

Janine and Justin Mohamed will discuss their own experience of childhood in the context of Australia’s past policies towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and what continued failures in rights means for Indigenous children today.

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World Pneumonia Day: vaccines, oxygen therapy and the impact of Covid-19

It is World Pneumonia Day on November 12th.  Pneumonia and other acute lower respiratory infections remain the most common causes of childhood death, and illness requiring hospitalization globally. This is despite the effective pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) being widely available, which points to the varied causation of childhood pneumonia in 2020.

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Precision Health in paediatric respiratory medicine – physiology is the key

recision (or personalised) Health is being promoted as the future of healthcare. Indeed, precision health is the key theme of the latest MCRI strategic plan and the focus of much attention on campus. One of the key tools in precision health is genomics. During this Grand Round, Prof Colin Robertson will reflect on his extensive experience as a clinician-scientist in paediatric respiratory medicine. In particular, he will focus on the successes and failures of genomics in conditions such as cystic fibrosis and asthma, and he will contend that the key to using genomics to improve patient care is a strong understanding of physiology in health and disease.

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“Bring in the Allies!” Allied Health, united in care

RCH is excited to be celebrating Allied Health Professionals Day on 14 October 2020. Allied Health Professionals Day first began in the UK in 2018 and has since become an international event to recognise and celebrate the Allied Health Professional community.

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The Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity (CCOPMM) in the time of the pandemic

The Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity (CCOPMM) monitors the causes and factors involved in all child deaths throughout Victoria, and provides recommendations to Government, health care professionals and the community.  In recent years the Council has identified the social and economic gradient in risk of child deaths, which includes virtually all causes, from accidental trauma, drowning, SIDS, infections and chronic illnesses.  The Council has long recommended improvements in the systems for provision of child welfare and support to families who are vulnerable, especially families of children with chronic illness, and these needs are magnified in the COVID-19 pandemic era.

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