The Centre for Health Analytics launched to the Campus in June 2021. With two years of enabling the Campus to better use our data, the Centre will share successes and lessons learned across their journey.
In recent years there has been increasing policy attention paid to child mental health, at a state and national level, given the marked increase in mental health problems in children. In addition to causing distress for children and families, when mental health difficulties are not addressed in a timely way, they can become entrenched and have serious effects into adult life.
Racism as a fundamental cause of health and health inequalities is increasingly recognised as a major public health crisis, echoing what First Nations peoples have been saying since colonisation. There is growing empirical evidence of the multiple ways in which racism impacts health and wellbeing for children and young people.
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.
This Grand Round will consider how human-centered design, applied to the health system and informed by a health-literacy framework, may help advance health equity. We will review evidence that includes inter-disciplinary scholarship (e.g., behavioral science, computer science, clinical epidemiology) in the areas of obesity prevention, promoting school readiness, chronic-illness management and the care of children with special health care needs.
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.
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.
Victoria’s newborn bloodspot screening (NBS) program commenced in 1966 with screening for phenylketonuria, and from the early 1970’s close to 100% of newborns were being screened. Improvements in analytical and genetic testing technologies saw the successive introduction of screening for congenital hypothyroidism, cystic fibrosis and 22 metabolic conditions. Today, Victoria’s NBS program detects about 80 babies per year with these conditions, preventing life-long debilitating outcomes and even death.
The Melbourne Children’s Campus (the Campus) has the culture and expertise to provide our infants, children and young people, and their families with world class mental health care (The RCH), built on sound evidence (MCRI), and workforce training and education (University of Melbourne, Department of Paediatrics). The integration of mental health research, education and care across the Campus underpins the Campus Mental Health Strategy (Strategy), a five-year Strategy that has been funded for the first 2 years by The RCH Foundation. A team of 14 people will lead and implement the Strategy, supported by many leaders and staff from across the Campus.
What does great care, everywhere really look like when one in five children begin school with an established or emerging health or development need? One of the best strategies for optimising children’s health is building the capability and capacity of communities to meet their needs locally.
This Grand Round explores the partnership between the Wimmera Southern Mallee By Five project and the Centre for Community Child Health. It examines what it looks like when primary health, education and social care unite to build relational practice, capability and capacity for the sake of a community’s children.
