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News & Events
Data reveals important clues about child abuse and neglectResearchers working on the Developmental Pathways Project are determined to find out what makes families vulnerable to child abuse and neglect.
News & Events
International expert to bring together WA leaders to improve outcomes for kidsDr Jack Shonkoff, from Harvard University is visiting Perth this week as a guest of CoLab, Goodstart Early Learning and Child Australia.
News & Events
Playgroup Week celebrates importance of early childhood interventionNational Playgroup Week, the annual event run by Playgroup Australia, will take place across the country from 20 March to 27 March.
News & Events
Starting & staying on track10 years of work guided by The Kids Research Institute Australia has resulted in huge improvements in the development of Aboriginal children at the start of school.
News & Events
New research partnership to ensure no child gets left behindResearchers will track the progress of 12,000 children from birth to age five to identify what services are valuable to families to support the health and wellb
Research
A peer support intervention for first-time mothers: Feasibility and preliminary efficacy of the mummy buddy programThe transition to motherhood, although joyous, can be highly stressful, and the availability of professional postpartum support for mothers is often limited. Peer volunteer support programs may offer a viable and cost-effective method to provide community-based support for new mothers. The aim of this study is to determine the feasibility of a peer volunteer support program-The Mummy Buddy Program-in which experienced volunteer mothers are paired with, and trained to offer social support to, first-time mothers.
Research
Findings from the Kids in Communities Study (KiCS): A mixed methods study examining community-level influences on early childhood developmentThere is increasing international interest in place-based approaches to improve early childhood development (ECD) outcomes. The available data and evidence are limited and precludes well informed policy and practice change. Developing the evidence-base for community-level effects on ECD is one way to facilitate more informed and targeted community action.
Research
Protection against neonatal respiratory viral infection via maternal treatment during pregnancy with the benign immune training agent OM-85Incomplete maturation of immune regulatory functions at birth is antecedent to the heightened risk for severe respiratory infections during infancy. Our forerunner animal model studies demonstrated that maternal treatment with the microbial-derived immune training agent OM-85 during pregnancy promotes accelerated postnatal maturation of mechanisms that regulate inflammatory processes in the offspring airways.
Research
The association between preschooler physical activity duration and intensity and social emotional development: Findings from the PLAYCE studySocial emotional development is imperative to young children's long-term psychological and physical health. Physical activity (PA) may be important for young children's social emotional development. The association between preschooler PA duration and intensity and social emotional development was investigated.
Research
Weather and children's time allocationThis paper presents the first causal estimates of the effect of weather on children's time allocation. It exploits exogenous variations in local weather observed during the random diary dates of two nationally representative cohorts of Australian children whose time-use diaries were surveyed biennially over 10 years.