We have a National Roadmap, which includes COVID-19 vaccine coverage targets for the easing of restrictions. But how do children and adolescents fit into this, with regard the direct and indirect effects of Delta on their health and well-being?
Mental Health is an issue of growing concern across the community. This has been amplified through the COVID-19 pandemic. Child mental health is also an ongoing priority for the Melbourne Children’s Campus (MCC) and its three partners. The RCH treats many vulnerable patient groups (e.g., children with chronic illness, neurodevelopmental disorders, psychosocial challenges) with elevated risk of psychological and mental health difficulties. This extends across our inpatient and outpatient services and into the community. Despite this, mental health services can be fragmented and difficult to access.
The NAIDOC Week Grand Round will highlight how Wadja Aboriginal Family Place has provided excellence and leadership in health services to Aboriginal Children and their families at the Royal Children’s Hospital. Wadja works collaboratively in partnership in the areas of child health assessments, advocacy, liaison, research, mental health, education, and family support to improve the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal children and young people.
We are unleashing the power of data to improve child health. The first such Centre in Australia is a hive of potential and ideas, realising the shared vision of our campus partners. We are using data to advance and humanise many different perspectives of paediatric patient care.
Too often research evidence fails to inform practice or policy, and opportunities to improve children’s health and wellbeing are lost. The Melbourne Children’s Knowledge Translation and Research Impact Project, funded by the RCH Foundation, seeks to better understand campus KT and impact needs, and has developed and piloted strategies to advance knowledge translation, implementation and research impact.
Hospitalisation for treatment of serious illness can place infants, and their families, at risk with respect to their mental health. Trauma responses are common, and optimal infant-parent relationship development may be disrupted. Significant additional environmental and psychosocial burdens were placed on this group in 2020 as a consequence of measures adopted to protect the community from COVID-19.
Advances in health and medical research are accelerating our understanding of disease mechanisms, and leading to new preventative interventions, diagnostic tools and novel therapeutic approaches that are transforming clinical care. Hence, there is an increasing need to better embed clinical research into clinical care delivered at the RCH and to support the development of individuals who are fluent in both clinical care and research.
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.
For several months, we have experienced significant restrictions on how we live and work. Whilst Victoria’s strict lockdown protocols are working to suppress the virus, for many of us, social isolation has taken a toll on mental health. Our new reality, and the social, mental and emotional deprivation that accompanies it, highlights that what we do in life and who we do it with, are critical to how we feel.
Blood-clotting complications are rapidly emerging as a significant part of the pathogenesis of COVID-19. There are reports of otherwise well people with COVID-10 having strokes, pulmonary emboli and heart attacks, and children with inflammation of their blood vessels. In recent weeks series of cases of a multi-system inflammatory condition, some resembling Kawasaki disease, have been reported in children in Europe, UK and USA.
