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First Nations women often experience harmful, inequitable maternity care, shaped by intergenerational trauma and culturally unsafe care. Historical forced removal of First Nations children has created enduring trauma that influences pregnancy and birthing experiences. In the Australian Capital Territory, maternity care is provided through Western biomedical systems, where increasing child protection interventions and fear of surveillance affect women's engagement with care.
Severe microcephaly, or head circumference at least 3 standard deviations below the mean for age and sex, is a rare condition with diverse etiology, making diagnosis challenging. Following the 2015 to 2016 Zika virus outbreak, surveillance studies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom and Ireland were conducted to monitor severe microcephaly. We describe the etiology, clinical features, and diagnostic investigations of severe microcephaly among children aged younger than 1 year.
While international evidence suggests seasonal variations may influence outcomes of interventions for pediatric obesity, data for Aotearoa New Zealand are limited. We examined seasonal variations in changes in body mass index standard deviation score (BMI SDS) in young people with obesity enrolled in an intervention programme.
ADHD has been associated with impaired central nervous dopaminergic pathways. Brain iron is an essential cofactor for the synthesis of dopamine and the substantia nigra (SN) is a significant pool of dopaminergic neurons playing a central role in the activity of the nigrostriatal pathway. The present study investigated SN iron content in children with ADHD, its relationship with ADHD symptom severity and cognitive performance.
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.
Little is known about how or when language and visuospatial processing lateralise in the brain, and if individual differences in lateralisation are related to early language or visuospatial abilities. We explored if patterns of language and visuospatial lateralisation are related to cognitive skills in young children.
Children with early-stage (pre-symptomatic) type 1 diabetes are currently identified primarily via research-based screening programmes in Australia. Once identified, families live with the knowledge that their child has an increased chance of developing symptomatic, lifelong, insulin-requiring type 1 diabetes but have no specific clinical pathway available to them in Western Australia for accessing tailored support or education. This project aimed to co-design a new clinical pathway to address this unmet need.
Early life nutrition is associated with child behaviour; however, the interplay with genetic vulnerability is understudied. We hypothesised that psychiatric genetic risk interacted with early nutrition to predict behavioural problems in childhood and adolescence.
In the austral summer of 2021-2022, Australia experienced an unprecedented Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) outbreak, with detections over 3000 km south of previous occurrences. Given the limited knowledge of JEV transmission ecology in Australia, we developed geospatial models of transmission risk to support the public health response. We created time-varying habitat suitability models for suspected mosquito vectors and ardeid hosts using month-scaled occurrence and covariate data from 2000-2023.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples share rich cultural traditions unrivalled across the world; however, the continued impact of colonisation led to sustained, profound trauma that has spanned generations. With Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people presenting to hospital emergency departments for self-harm and suicidal behaviours at a rate 2.9 times higher than non-Indigenous people, there is a need to develop culturally appropriate interventions to address this growing problem.