Education and Research

Healthy Trajectories: A Child and Youth Disability Research Hub

Our Healthy Trajectories research is done in partnership with consumers, clinicians, and researchers with diverse disciplinary expertise. Our goal is to contribute evidence to rapidly improve the health, wellbeing, and participation of those with child-onset disability and their families. We will only be able to ensure that people with disability can participate as equal members of society if we collaborate effectively across disciplines and sectors: we invite your involvement.

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Whistle while you wheeze

Wheezing in childhood is extremely common, nearly 50% of children experience at least one episode of wheezing before the age of 6 years and wheeze is one of the commonest health problems requiring medical care. Children aged between 1-5 years account for 75% of these admissions with the median age of admission for acute attacks of wheeze being 3 years.

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Life as a clinician-scientist in General Medicine: Choose your own adventure

Interested in combining research with your clinical work? This Grand Round features clinician scientists from the Department of General Medicine. You will hear about their diverse career pathways and research programs, as well as how they balance research with their clinical work and other commitments.

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Learning Health Systems

The term ‘learning health systems’ is not new. But widespread consensus that learning is crucial for health system performance is not matched by shared understanding of how health systems learn. The speaker will present ideas for such shared understanding based on a recent report by the WHO’s Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research.

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Clinical and genetic challenges of mitochondrial disorders. What does Maeve’s Law offer?

The primary mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation disorders are characterized by clinical and genetic heterogeneity, limited treatment options, and poor outcomes.  Part of the complexity is because both the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes may be involved.  Mitochondrial DNA is maternally inherited.  From a reproductive counselling perspective, couples with a family history of mitochondrial DNA disease often have limited reproductive options available to them.

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Generation Victoria (GenV): Every baby. Every parent. Everybody.

Very large, truly population-representative pregnancy cohorts are rare internationally. Generation Victoria (GenV) is a whole-state cohort targeting all newborns (~150,000) and their parents over 2 full years. Components include (i) families recruited soon after birth, (ii) biospecimens from pregnancy onwards, (iii) extensive data linkage supplemented by (iv) minimal GenV collected data, all enabling (v) many additional integrated research studies, both observational and interventional.

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Finding a way through the challenges and turmoil of the experience of sibling sexual abuse: How hope can help

Sibling sexual abuse is 3-5 times more common than father/step-father abuse. This study looked past the factors that might contribute to the occurrence of sibling sexual abuse with the aim of better understanding the experience of therapists working with families with such experience and collaboratively developing principles to guide practice in this complex area of child sexual abuse.

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Launching the Paediatric Academy, one place to connect and collaborate

We are excited to launch the Department of Paediatrics Academy, a community of practice on a shared platform across University of Melbourne, RCH and MCRI, as well as collaborating organisations. 

In the digital world we live in now, communities of practice can be highly effective where the working context can be complex and ambiguous. This presentation will highlight the functions of a community of practice, learn firsthand from Boston Children’s Hospital’s Academy, as well as local experience from RCH Centre of Health Analytics. 

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