The impact of circadian and sleep factors on neurodevelopment. This project aims to longitudinally examine the contributions of multiple circadian and sleep factors on the development of the teen brain. Adolescence is associated with a change in the internal body clock, leading to later bed and wake times and loss of sleep. It is also a time when the teenage brain is rapidly maturing to support learning. Despite the known importance of sleep in adolescence we know little about how the circadian ....The impact of circadian and sleep factors on neurodevelopment. This project aims to longitudinally examine the contributions of multiple circadian and sleep factors on the development of the teen brain. Adolescence is associated with a change in the internal body clock, leading to later bed and wake times and loss of sleep. It is also a time when the teenage brain is rapidly maturing to support learning. Despite the known importance of sleep in adolescence we know little about how the circadian clock and sleep impacts the developing brain. Our project expects to advance understanding of the importance of sleep and circadian timing for healthy brain and cognitive development. This knowledge will inform policy and prevention/intervention programs to benefit individuals, parents and the community.Read moreRead less
Promoting Child and Carer Wellbeing and Placement Stability in Kinship Care. Kinship care is the fastest growing out-of-home care placement in Australia, yet least supported. This project aims to implement and evaluate an attachment and trauma-based program for kinship carers, explore its suitability for cultural adaptation for Indigenous families and co-design practical resources to promote program sustainability and trauma-informed practice. This project is Australia’s first randomised trial o ....Promoting Child and Carer Wellbeing and Placement Stability in Kinship Care. Kinship care is the fastest growing out-of-home care placement in Australia, yet least supported. This project aims to implement and evaluate an attachment and trauma-based program for kinship carers, explore its suitability for cultural adaptation for Indigenous families and co-design practical resources to promote program sustainability and trauma-informed practice. This project is Australia’s first randomised trial of a tailored program for kinship carers and expects to generate vital knowledge on evidence-based support. Via implementing an innovative program for kinship carers in statutory child protection, this project should build capacity for research-based practice and benefit family wellbeing and placement outcomes in kinship care.Read moreRead less
Social buffering of fear inhibition in adolescent rats. Adolescence is an important time when individuals learn to manage stress-related emotions like fear. Peers can help, or hinder, individuals to regulate fear. This project aims to understand how, when, and for whom social buffering of fear regulation occurs during adolescence. It uses a behavioural, pharmacological, and neural approach to explore these issues. The project aims to close the gap in understanding of how social companions affect ....Social buffering of fear inhibition in adolescent rats. Adolescence is an important time when individuals learn to manage stress-related emotions like fear. Peers can help, or hinder, individuals to regulate fear. This project aims to understand how, when, and for whom social buffering of fear regulation occurs during adolescence. It uses a behavioural, pharmacological, and neural approach to explore these issues. The project aims to close the gap in understanding of how social companions affect basic learning and memory processes in an understudied population of adolescents. The expected outcomes of this project include a richer knowledge of how peers shape emotional regulation during development, which will ultimately inform social-based approaches for improving emotion regulation in youth.
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Know thyself: Development of metacognition in childhood and adolescence. This project aims to advance our understanding of the development of children and adolescents’ insight into their own thoughts and behaviours, or metacognition. Individual differences in metacognition impact learning and contribute to the educational achievement gap observed in many countries, including Australia. By combining analysis of existing international cohort data and state-of-the art developmentally appropriate ne ....Know thyself: Development of metacognition in childhood and adolescence. This project aims to advance our understanding of the development of children and adolescents’ insight into their own thoughts and behaviours, or metacognition. Individual differences in metacognition impact learning and contribute to the educational achievement gap observed in many countries, including Australia. By combining analysis of existing international cohort data and state-of-the art developmentally appropriate neuroimaging methodology, the project is expected to create new basic research knowledge. An intended benefit is the development and evaluation of an evidence-based intervention to enhance the metacognitive skills of primary and secondary school pupils and improve their achievement in mathematics.Read moreRead less
Weight stigma in the preconception, pregnancy and postpartum periods. The overall aim of this project is to develop guidance for the translation of weight stigma evidence into preconception, pregnancy and postpartum obesity-related policy. It focuses on the socio-ecological factors that perpetuate weight stigma in women across the reproductive life phase, that is, in women planning a pregnancy, in women who are pregnant and in mothers who have given birth within a 24-month period.
Child health and developmental inequities: Evidence for precision policy. The project aims to use cutting edge analytic approaches applied to existing data to identify how policy interventions related to parents’ mental health, preschool programs, and the built environment can be optimised to reduce inequities in children’s mental, academic, and physical health outcomes. The project will be informed by our partners and advisers from across government portfolios and service delivery, ensuring tha ....Child health and developmental inequities: Evidence for precision policy. The project aims to use cutting edge analytic approaches applied to existing data to identify how policy interventions related to parents’ mental health, preschool programs, and the built environment can be optimised to reduce inequities in children’s mental, academic, and physical health outcomes. The project will be informed by our partners and advisers from across government portfolios and service delivery, ensuring that the evidence generated has contemporary policy relevance. The project expects to identify clear and actionable policy pathways to reduce child inequities in Australia, which can benefit decision makers by helping them to direct limited public funds towards intervention opportunities that will have the greatest impact.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE200100343
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$427,115.00
Summary
Dying well: Designing rural end-of-life services for chronic disease. This project aims to understand how existing rural service structures impact access to end-of-life support in chronic conditions. Chronic diseases account for 90% of deaths in Australia, yet access to end-of-life support is limited and little is known about services in rural areas. Information gathered through patient and stakeholder interviews, national survey and service mapping will be used to generate a new evidence-based ....Dying well: Designing rural end-of-life services for chronic disease. This project aims to understand how existing rural service structures impact access to end-of-life support in chronic conditions. Chronic diseases account for 90% of deaths in Australia, yet access to end-of-life support is limited and little is known about services in rural areas. Information gathered through patient and stakeholder interviews, national survey and service mapping will be used to generate a new evidence-based framework and guideline. These outputs will support early engagement with end-of-life planning, known to improve quality of life and reduce health system costs, and to inform development of equitable future end-of-life services for people and their families living with chronic conditions across rural Australia. Read moreRead less
Healthy infant and young child diets from sustainable first-food systems. Breastfeeding, breastmilk and other first foods consumed during infancy and early childhood, are currently neglected in food systems research and policy action, despite their importance to establishing life-long dietary preferences, health and sustainability. This project addresses this gap, by developing a novel 'first-food systems' conceptual framework, describing global, regional and national changes in infant and young ....Healthy infant and young child diets from sustainable first-food systems. Breastfeeding, breastmilk and other first foods consumed during infancy and early childhood, are currently neglected in food systems research and policy action, despite their importance to establishing life-long dietary preferences, health and sustainability. This project addresses this gap, by developing a novel 'first-food systems' conceptual framework, describing global, regional and national changes in infant and young child diets, and generating end-user knowledge to generate political commitment for early-life nutrition. This research will deliver economic, social and environmental benefits for Australia and international communities, by helping to reduce the ill-health and environmental harms linked with unhealthy early-life diets.Read moreRead less
Social practices of oral health in Australian preschool children. The aim of the study is to explore "social practices" of oral health in Australian (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) preschool children. We use this emerging theory to move away from focusing on individuals and individual behaviour (and blame) to identify and map social practices: actions, materials and meanings families attribute to
child’s oral health. Expected project outcomes include identifying practices promoting or underminin ....Social practices of oral health in Australian preschool children. The aim of the study is to explore "social practices" of oral health in Australian (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) preschool children. We use this emerging theory to move away from focusing on individuals and individual behaviour (and blame) to identify and map social practices: actions, materials and meanings families attribute to
child’s oral health. Expected project outcomes include identifying practices promoting or undermining children’s oral health that can inform upstream and downstream policy directions and practices to improve health outcomes. This offers a new approach to "wicked" problems such as oral health where extensive
effort has not reduced morbidity and cost despite rhetoric that oral health is preventable.Read moreRead less
Staffing practices in Aboriginal primary health care services. This project aims to generate new knowledge about the impact of short-term staffing in remote Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services on service acceptability to patients, workload and attitudes of long-term staff and the effectiveness and cost of services. The project intends to compare these results to recent findings about the impact of short-term staffing in government-run clinics, in order to quantify and describe the po ....Staffing practices in Aboriginal primary health care services. This project aims to generate new knowledge about the impact of short-term staffing in remote Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services on service acceptability to patients, workload and attitudes of long-term staff and the effectiveness and cost of services. The project intends to compare these results to recent findings about the impact of short-term staffing in government-run clinics, in order to quantify and describe the potential positive effect of community control. Expected outcomes include rigorous evidence about the 'fly in/fly out' workforce and the impact of community control which can inform new policy that will stabilise the remote health workforce, save money and contribute to 'closing the gap' in health outcomes.Read moreRead less