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Globally, rates of children with physical and mental health problems are increasing. Health issues in early childhood often persist into adulthood, highlighting the need to ensure children are supported to flourish from the start of life.
Asha Jacinta Bernadette Bowen Walton Ricciardo BA MBBS DCH FRACP PhD GAICD FAHMS OAM MBBS (hon) DCH FACD Head, Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention
Congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV) is a common infection at birth with the potential to cause significant and permanent morbidity, most commonly hearing loss. Targeted cCMV testing programmes use hearing loss as an indicator of an infant being at high risk of the infection and thereby can 'target' or focus testing on those at greatest risk. Australian and International guidelines recommend that high-risk infants be offered cCMV testing, yet across Australia, a formal testing system does not exist.
The estimated effectiveness of SMS (short message service) reminders for improving childhood vaccine coverage and timeliness has varied in previous studies. The observed heterogeneity in effectiveness may be explained in part by variation in reminder content or timing of the reminder relative to the vaccine schedule date. We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of a range of SMS reminders of varied content and timing for improving on-time childhood vaccination.
Perioperative respiratory adverse events (PRAE) are a main cause of morbidity and mortality in paediatric anaesthesia. Clinicians need to be able to predict their patients' risk of PRAE to plan their care. Clinical risk prediction tools have been developed to assist with pre-operative risk stratification; however, validation outside the contexts of their development is limited. In this study, we test the ability of common risk prediction tools to identify patients at high risk of PRAE in general anaesthesia.
Physical activity can support physical and mental health among children living with chronic health conditions; however, programmes must be tailored to their specific needs to support participation.
Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) prevents pneumococcal disease and pneumonia, but indirect effects are poorly understood in low-coverage, high-burden settings like Papua New Guinea (PNG). PNG introduced 13-valent PCV (PCV13) in 2014. We aimed to assess direct and indirect effectiveness of PCV13 against vaccine-type pneumococcal carriage among children with pneumonia or suspected meningitis in PNG
The prevalence of allergic diseases across the Australian population, in all regions and age groups, is not well documented. This study aimed to describe the prevalence and distribution of five allergic diseases (allergic rhinitis, asthma, drug allergy, eczema, and food allergy) and examine differences by sociodemographic factors.
Although evidence supports clinicians to "safely do less" for febrile infants assessed as low risk of serious bacterial infection (SBI), early discharge may increase caregiver concern and reduce satisfaction with care. We captured the self-reported satisfaction and concerns for families enrolled in the study of fever, blood cultures and readiness for discharge in infants less than 3 months old (FeBRILe3), a prospective safety assessment of early discharge of low-risk febrile infants, to aid evaluation of this practice.
This unprecedented longitudinal twin study focused on the arc of language acquisition from first words to adolescence, with data collection at 2, 4, and 6 years of age, reported in four previous studies and now new data at ages 9 and 14 years.