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Young people must be central to health response design to ensure they are relevant and effective. It requires a clearer understanding of the opportunities and expectations surrounding youth engagement. Therefore, this study aims to gain a deeper understanding of the health priorities of young adults residing in South Australia and their engagement in the design of health programmes.
Discover more about Telethon Kids Institute research.
First Nations women in Australia continue to experience disproportionately adverse maternal and infant outcomes. The ongoing legacy of colonisation and systemic racism shapes these outcomes. In the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), maternity services remain dominated by Western biomedical approaches that fail to deliver culturally safe and anti-racist care despite national standards that mandate such practices.
In close partnership with Aboriginal Elders and community members in Western Australia's south-west, we created ‘Kaal Tackles Eczema’, a children’s book to help Aboriginal families manage eczema. Our research showed a high prevalence and need for culturally relevant resources. The book uses Noongar language and art to educate and reduce infections, and is available online and in schools.
A lifelong auto-immune condition that can affect anyone, but is most commonly diagnosed in childhood.
Food allergies have become more common in our community, with up to one in ten young children now affected. Reactions can range from mild hives to life threatening anaphylaxis and breathing difficulties. The most common food allergies are to egg, peanut, tree nuts, cow’s milk, fish, shellfish, sesame, wheat and soy.
Group A Streptococcal (GAS) pharyngitis is an important precursor infection to severe complications including rheumatic fever and invasive GAS. Rapid molecular point of care testing (POCT) for GAS infection has advantages over traditional microbiological culture, especially in settings with limited or absent laboratory infrastructure and where GAS complications predominate.
A wet cough in a child for more than four weeks could indicate infection in the lungs. The wet cough is caused by mucus in the airway. The mucus becomes infected with bacteria and causes airway inflammation that can progress to permanent lung damage known as bronchiectasis.
Rheumatic heart disease, a major cause of morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income countries, results from acute rheumatic fever (ARF), for which no diagnostic test currently exists. The ARF Diagnosis Collaborative Network (ARC Network) was established to address this gap by recruiting a rigorously phenotyped, globally representative cohort of children and adolescents with ARF and controls to support biomarker discovery.
B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) is the most common pediatric cancer. Current therapeutic regimens have improved 5-year event-free survival rates to 90%, however clinical outcomes for high-risk subgroups, such as BCR-ABL1+ B-ALL and relapsed ALL, remain poor. In addition, 16% of newly diagnosed children with ALL present with vertebral compression fractures. Moreover, 16% of children with ALL undergoing glucocorticoid therapy also experience a high incidence of vertebral fractures, indicating that bone health may be compromised by both leukemia progression and osteotoxicity of chemotherapy.